Full text of "Hitler Stalin Mussolini"

See other formats

Hitler, Stalin,
and Mussolini

Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century

Fourth Edition

BRUCE F. PAULEY

Wiley Blackwell

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini

Totalitarianism in the
Twentieth Century

FOURTH EDITION

Bruce F. Pauley

Wiley Blackwell

This fourth edition first published 2015
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Edition history: Harlan Davidson, Inc (le 1997,2e 2003,3e 2009)

Registered Office

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, P019 8SQ, UK
Editorial Offices

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, P019 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about
how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website
at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Bruce F. Pauley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without
the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in
print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks,
trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated
with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best
efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the
accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied
warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding
that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher
nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other
expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pauley, Bruce F.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: totalitarianism in the twentieth century /

Bruce F. Pauley. - Fourth edition,
pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-118-76592-0 (pbk.)

1. Europe-Politics and government-20th century. 2. Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945.

3. Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953. 4. Mussolini, Benito, 1883-1945. 5. Totalitarianism-
History-20th century. I. Title.

D445.P38 2015
940.5-dc23

2014011423

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Hitler © Glasshouse Images / Alamy; Mussolini © Lebrecht Music and
Arts Photo Library / Alamy; Stalin © Glasshouse Images / Alamy

Set in 10.5/13pt Minion by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India

1 2015

For my grandchildren
Alena, Ben, Will, and Reina Pauley.

May they live in a world
free from terror and environmental degradation.

Contents

List of Maps x

List of Plates xi

Preface xiii

1 The Ideological Foundations 1

Definitions of Totalitarianism 1

Marxism - Leninism - Stalinism 4

Fascism and Nazism 6

2 The Seizure of Power 12

Russia on the Eve of Revolution 13

The Establishment of the Soviet Dictatorship 16

The Failure of Liberal Italy 22

The Birth and Triumph of Fascism 26

Germany and the Impact of World War I 32

The Weimar Republic and the Rise of the Nazi Movement 38

The Great Depression and the Nazi Takeover 44

3 Personalities and Policies of the Dictators 51

Stalin’s Youth and Early Career 52

Stalin the Demigod 55

Mussolini: The Young Socialist 58

The Duce: Strengths and Weaknesses 63

viii Contents

The Young Hitler 65

Hitler: The Chaotic Dictator 69

Hitler’s Private Life and Relations with Women 73

4 Totalitarian Economies 77

The End of the New Economic Policy 78

Stalin’s War against the Peasants 80

The First Five-Year Plan and Industrialization 86

The Fascist Economy 89

The Economy of National Socialist Germany 94

5 Propaganda, Culture, and Education 102

The Limitations of Propaganda 103

Soviet Propaganda 105

Fascist Propaganda 107

Nazi Propaganda 109

Totalitarian Culture 114

Soviet Education 122

Education in the Fascist States 125

Youth Groups 128

6 Family Values and Health 134

The Conservative Trend in Values 135

Soviet Women: The Mixed Blessings of Emancipation 136

Fascist Italy: The Failure of Antifeminism 140

Women in Nazi Germany: Kinder, Kirche, und Kiiche? 144

Health and Eugenics in Nazi Germany 150

Religion: The Basic Incompatibility 153

7 Totalitarian Terror 162

The Great Purges in the Soviet Union 163

Terror and Persecution in the Fascist States 172

The Persecution of Jews 174

8 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 187

Hitler’s Foreign Policy Strategy 188

Hitler as “Peace Lover,” 1933-1935 193

From Ethiopia to Spain: Fascist Italy at War 195

Austria and Czechoslovakia: Hitler’s First Conquests 200

Contents ix

The Approach of War 206

The Blitzkrieg Campaigns 210

The Italian Intervention 216

9 Total War, 1941-1945 223

Hitler Turns East 226

Stalins Preparations for War 229

The Russian Campaign in 1941 235

ffifler and the Untermenschen 238

Hitler and Stalin as War Lords 242

The Fall of Fascism 249

The German Home Front 253

The War in the West 256

The End of the Third Reich 260

10 The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism 266

Stalins Last Years, 1945-1953 267

The Khrushchev Era 271

Reaction and Reform: From Brezhnev to Gorbachev 275

Problems of the Soviet Economy and Society 279

Soviet Women in the Last Years of the Regime 282

Soviet Society in the 1980s: The Balance Sheet 285

The Revolt of the Satellites and the Disintegration

of the Soviet Union 286

The End of Soviet Totalitarianism 289

11 Lessons and Prospects 292

The Triumph of Dogmatism 294

The Structural Flaws of Totalitarianism 295

The Totalitarian Legacy 300

Bibliographical Essay 308

Index 338

List of Maps

1 Boundary changes after World War I

2 The expansion of German territory and power,
1935-1939

3 World War II in Europe, September 1939-June 1941

List of Plates

Plates fall between pages 172 and 173.

1 The antiques of history: portraits of Lenin,

Stalin, and Marx

2 The Winter Palace in St Petersburg

3 Poster from 1946 showing Soviet border guards

4 Fascist monument in Bolzano, Italy

5 Stalin the “democrat,” voting in one of the Soviet Union’s
uncontested elections

6 Stalin the “congenial colleague,” with his foreign minister

7 A huge wall painting of Lenin in central Moscow

8 Mussolini with King Victor Emmanuel III, May 1923

9 Mussolini’s chancellery, the Palazzo Venezia in Rome

10 Front page of the Volkischer Beobachter, April 20,1940

11 Hitler as the hero of the German youth

12 The Nazi ladies’ men: Hitler and Josef Goebbels

13 Soviet poster ridiculing slow workers

14 Soviet poster calling for more quality in consumer goods

15 Stalinist propaganda plaques in Moscow

16 The Boulevard of the Imperial Roman Forums in Rome

17 Hitler, the “humble man of the people”

18 World War I American recruiting poster

xii List of Plates

19 Soviet poster from 1946 promoting education and culture

20 Dachau concentration camp, near Munich

21 The entrance to Auschwitz concentration camp

22 Identification insignia for Nazi concentration
camp prisoners

23 Ruins of the New Synagogue in central Berlin

24 The fascist partners: Mussolini and Hitler on parade, 1937

25 Front page of the Volkischer Beobachter,

September 19,1938

26 Arrival of Soviet prisoners of war at the Buchenwald
concentration camp

27 A World War II monument in Yaroslav, Russia

28 Communist propaganda poster in Santiago de Cuba

29 The Wall dividing East and West Berlin

30 The face of the new Russia: a McDonald’s restaurant
in Moscow

31 Campaign poster in Moscow following the fall
of Communism

Preface

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century is
the product of a lifelong interest in totalitarianism which began with a
trip to Prague in the fall of 1957. In those grim days the Czech capital
was run by a Stalinist-style regime; an enormous statue of the dictator
still towered over the Vlatava (Moldau) River. Even though Stalin had
been dead since 1953 and the general secretary of the Soviet Communist
party, Nikita Khrushchev, had launched his “de-Stalinization” campaign
in 1956, the Czechoslovak government remained defiantly resistant to
liberalization. Czechoslovakia had prospered between the world wars,
but by 1957 it had become an economic basket case. Russian flags were
all over the city and bookstores were filled with works by Russian poets
and novelists as well as books related to the history of Communism.
Whereas early twentieth-century Prague had been a mecca for foreign
tourists, in 1957 the group I was with - American students from the
Institute of European Studies in Vienna - were such a rarity that every¬
where we went crowds of curious children, adults, and soldiers literally
pressed their noses against the windows of our Volkswagen autobus.
Prague was so devoid of vehicles that we could have practically camped
out in the middle of the most important intersections.

That weekend in Prague so many years ago turned out to be the
first of many trips to the countries that were part of the Eastern Bloc

XIV

Preface

prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Documents, books, news¬
papers, and articles are the bread and butter of historical research and
the reading of some 300 books was obviously indispensable in pre¬
paring Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. However, like other historians,
I have found that there is no substitute for visiting sites where impor¬
tant historical events occurred, such as former Nazi concentration
camps and numerous monuments and buildings associated with
Mussolini’s Italy. The same is true so far as witnessing the everyday
life of societies whose regimes purported to be totalitarian. I have
tried to capture some of these experiences in the illustrations
contained in this book and more recently in my memoirs, Pioneering
History on Two Continents.

“Totalitarianism” is one of the most controversial terms of the twen¬
tieth century. First used by Italy’s democratic critics in the mid-1920s
to describe the new Fascist regime, it gained currency in Anglo-Saxon
countries during the 1930s in reference to Nazi Germany and the
Soviet Union as well. It became extremely popular between the signing
of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact in August 1939 and the
German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, a time when the
two dictatorships were virtual allies. However, once the Soviets became
enemies of the Nazis and especially after the American intervention
into the war in December 1941, the term suddenly became a political
embarrassment and disappeared from public discourse. With the
beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s and the 1950s, following
the Soviet occupation of east central Europe, the term reached a new
peak of popularity only to fall into disfavor during subsequent decades
when relations between the Soviet Union and the West improved.

Fading memories of Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Benito
Mussolini made “totalitarianism” an anachronism at best, and a
polemic at worst, loosely applied only to a country’s most diabolical
enemies. Scholars from the 1960s to the 1980s were particularly loath
to use a term that could label them as unreconstructed cold warriors
and preferred the term “authoritarian” to describe the Soviet Union of
their day. Members of President Ronald Reagan’s administration were
eager to revive the term after his election in 1980. The biggest cata¬
lysts for changed thinking, however, resulted from the opening of the

Preface

Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe in
1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself in 1991.
Interestingly enough, those people who had actually lived in totali¬
tarian states were not the least reluctant about using the term once
they were finally free to do so.

Whatever they may be called, the dictatorships of Germany, the
Soviet Union, and Italy were breakthroughs in the physical and intel¬
lectual control of their own populations, and the dictators of
Communist Russia and Nazi Germany slaughtered more people than
any other rulers in the history of the world, ancient or modern, with
the probable exception of their fellow totalitarian ruler Mao Zedong
in Communist China.

All of the totalitarian dictators are remarkable both for what they
intentionally accomplished and for what they achieved despite them¬
selves. Mussolini greatly enlarged Italy’s colonial empire but wound
up losing it all. He concentrated more power in his own hands than
any of his predecessors; but in the process he created such revulsion
that a postwar constitution established a premiership so weak that
Italy has experienced a new government head on average once a year
since the end of World War II. No one since Alexander the Great
changed so large a portion of the world as much in just 12 years as
Hitler did. He wanted to build a great continental empire but managed
instead to lose a quarter of Germany’s pre-1937 territory and to leave
his country, as well as the continent, divided. He carried the concepts
of nationalism, racism, and dictatorship to unheard of heights, but in
so doing created a backlash that thoroughly discredited all three ideas,
most of all his favorite doctrine of racism. Lenin and Stalin wanted to
eliminate deeply ingrained Russian habits of slackness and ineffi¬
ciency, as well as their country’s economic backwardness. They suc¬
ceeded instead in discouraging creativity, polluting the environment,
and leaving the Soviet Union still far behind its rivals in the West.

In the pantheon of historical monsters, Adolf Hitler has long held
pride of place for most students of history. His evil reputation is well
deserved, but his placement in a special category apart from Stalin is
probably due to the far greater documentation of his crimes than to
the objective facts, as well as the fact that Stalin was allied with the

XVI

Preface

West during World War II. The total collapse of Nazi Germany, the
postwar Nuremberg Trials, and early access to Nazi archives have
provided historians with a bonanza of raw historical materials that
even now have by no means been fully exhausted. The Soviet Union,
however, remained comparatively sealed off to Western historians
until its downfall in 1991; its archives are now revealing contents far
uglier than even the most ardent anti-Communists had once imag¬
ined. Fascist Italy, by comparison, has often received almost benevo¬
lent treatment from historians, when they have considered it at all.
Mussolini and Italian Fascism have frequently been depicted as either
slightly comical or relatively harmless. This reputation is undeserved.
That the Fascists inflicted only moderate destruction on foreign states
can be attributed to Italy’s lack of human and natural resources and
the backward state of its economy, not to a tolerant leader or even to
a peace-loving population. Losing wars is seldom popular, and Italy
began losing almost as soon as it entered World War II.

All of the dictatorships, but again especially those of the Soviet
Union and Germany, succeeded in deporting, imprisoning, and
killing their most productive workers and intellectuals, thus contrib¬
uting to their own ultimate demise. Hitler eliminated by one means or
another most of the half a million Jews who had lived in Germany
when he came to power in 1933, even though the Jewish community
had produced half the country’s Nobel Prize winners. The destruc¬
tion of the German Jewish community was merely the beginning of
the Holocaust which eventually claimed the lives of 5 to 6 million
European Jews and nearly as many non-Jews. Stalin actually managed
to outdo Hitler to become by far the biggest mass murderer in history,
being responsible for the death of around 20 million people, not
counting the soldiers and civilians killed in World War II. Unlike
Hitler’s victims, all of them were citizens of his own country and were
killed in peacetime; often they were his nation’s most productive
inhabitants. All of these deaths, one should hasten to add, represent
only those people whose murder can be directly attributed to the
three dictators. They do not include the tens of millions of soldiers
and civilians who died as a result of Hitler’s launching of World War
II or Stalin’s disastrous military strategy and tactics.

Preface xvii

This book does not purport to be a complete history of Europe’s
three twentieth-century totalitarian dictatorships. Such a work would
require many volumes and, if based on original research, would be far
beyond the capacity of any one historian. My goal in these pages is
much more modest, but nevertheless important. It is to evaluate some
of the many theories historians have proposed as to why the totali¬
tarian movements arose and seized power, how they utilized their
unprecedented authority, and why they ultimately failed. For well
over half a century, the subject has produced endless controversies,
only a few of which can be alluded to herein.

The destructiveness and indeed self-destructiveness of the regimes
is patently obvious. If any system of government deserves to be called
evil, it is surely totalitarianism. And yet, if totalitarianism had been
nothing more than terror and nihilism, one would be at a loss to
explain its popularity with a substantial part of the subject popula¬
tions. There is no question that short-term apparent achievements
usually disguised long-term baneful goals. But to be fair to those peo¬
ple who lived under totalitarianism, students of history must be ever
mindful that they did not enjoy the benefit of hindsight. To under¬
stand totalitarianism, or indeed any historical subject, one must begin
at the beginning, not at the end.

When Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini was first published in 1997
readers had the luxury of believing that totalitarianism was purely a
product of the twentieth century and a never-to-be-repeated
phenomenon. The people of the United States and Canada could also
imagine that mass murder and terror were things that occurred only
on other continents and certainly not in North America. The suicide
attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon
in Washington, DC, the Taliban regime and its al-Qaeda allies in
Afghanistan, as well as recent revelations about North Korea, have
shattered these illusions. What the world has learned since September
11,2001 is that totalitarianism and terror are still realities and cannot
be relegated to the status of historical curiosities with no relevance to
the present.

The late and unlamented Taliban regime in Afghanistan surpassed
any of the regimes described in this book in the extent to which it

xviii Preface

attempted to control every facet of the lives of the Afghan people. Its
Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice reg¬
ulated daily life in ways undreamed of by Hitler, Stalin, or Mussolini.
Laughter, music, and dancing, as well as modern inventions such as
television were all prohibited. The total repression of women made
the reactionary philosophy and policies of even Nazi Germany look
downright progressive by comparison. If in some respects the fascists
of Germany and Italy wanted to return to the bucolic days of the
nineteenth century when a womans place was in the home, the
Taliban wanted to return to the seventh century when Islamic women
were presumably totally veiled and never seen in public. Whereas the
totalitarian states of the twentieth century humiliated, imprisoned,
and tortured their internal enemies out of the public’s view, the
Taliban conducted very public executions in a former soccer stadium.
If both the Axis powers and even the Allies sometimes resorted to
attacking civilians to achieve their goals during World War II, civil¬
ians were the primary victims of the al-Qaeda organization. If fascism
and communism were secular religions that sometimes borrowed the
terminology and rituals of traditional religions, the Taliban was
openly and fanatically committed to the most extreme and reac¬
tionary form of Islam. Like new religions, the Taliban and the three
totalitarian regimes discussed in this book were all utopian. All four
regimes tried to create a new, and in their eyes perfect, society. Those
who rejected this brave new world were dealt with as enemies who
had to be suppressed for the common good.

This work has benefited enormously from classroom discussions I
have had with students at the University of Central Florida over my
35-year career at that institution. Of my colleagues at UCF, Vladimir
Solonari, who had the misfortune of growing to maturity in the Soviet
Union, was especially helpful. My thanks also go to the late Charles F.
Delzell, emeritus professor at Vanderbilt University, Professor Gilbert
McArthur of the College of William and Mary, and George M. Kren
of Kansas State University for reading the manuscript and offering
excellent suggestions. Likewise, the interlibrary loan librarians at the
University of Central Florida and at Windsor-Severance public library
in Windsor, Colorado, did yeoman work in providing me with

Preface

xix

some of the fifty books which I read in preparing this fourth edition
of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. These books, now included among
approximately 300 I have read for this work, have been particularly
helpful in understanding Hitler’s failed wartime policies and the
reasons for the collapse of the Soviet empire as well as for the disinte¬
gration of the Soviet Union itself. However, they have also reconfirmed
my thesis that the totalitarian regimes were reasonably successful only
when they pursued pragmatic policies and courted disaster when they
fully implemented their totalitarian ideals.

I would also like to extend my thanks to Gary Hollingsworth and
Michelle Harm for allowing me to use copies of the Hollingsworth
collection of Soviet posters. Institutions wishing to see this fascinating
collection in its entirety should contact Hollingsworth Fine Arts at
407-422-4242.1 gained valuable insights into East German totalitari¬
anism at a 1993 summer seminar at Yale University sponsored by the
National Endowment for the Humanities and directed by the late
Professor Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. A special debt of gratitude is owed
to the late Keith Eubank, who invited me to write this book and who
saved me from making many errors of fact and judgment. I alone, of
course, remain responsible for any mistakes that may remain. My
wife, Marianne, whom I met in a class on totalitarianism at the
University of Rochester (NY) more than 50 years ago, once again
patiently sacrificed many outings so that the writing of this book
could be brought to a timely conclusion.

Finally, I would like to thank the staff at Wiley Blackwell for their
help in the production of this fourth edition of Hitler, Stalin, and
Mussolini. The expertise, thoroughness, and quick responses to my
questions by Georgina Coleby, Lindsay Bourgeois, Leah Morin, and
Jacqueline Harvey are all very much appreciated. I especially want to
thank Andrew Davidson, the Senior History Editor at Wiley, for his
continued interest in my book.

The Ideological Foundations

The dictators ... took their ideologies very seriously.

Definitions of Totalitarianism

Surprisingly, there has been a greater agreement among historians
about how to define “totalitarianism” than there has been about
whether the definition actually fits any of the states usually described
as totalitarian. Advocates of the term stress: (1) the extraordinary
powers of the leader; (2) the importance of an exclusionist ideology;
(3) the existence of a single mass party; (4) a secret police prepared to
use terror to eradicate all domestic opposition; (5) a monopoly of the
communications media as well as over the educational systems; (6) a
determination to change basic social, artistic, and literary values; and
(7) an insistence that the welfare of the state be placed above the
welfare of its citizens.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

The Ideological Foundations

Much less agreement can be found among historians on the impor¬
tance of purges to totalitarianism, the role of state economic planning,
and the degree to which citizens of totalitarian states were able to
maintain some sort of private life. Scholars who object to the term
altogether note that even in the Soviet Union and Germany, where the
governments were the most powerful, many individuals maintained
private lives comparatively free of authoritarian controls. In the Soviet
Union there were competing factions, interest groups, and bureau¬
cratic networks that could defy government decrees. And industrial
and military leaders in Germany, as well as the monarchy and the
Roman Catholic Church in Italy, all retained considerable autonomy.
Proponents of the totalitarian concept assert that it was an ideal,
which, like all ideals, could never be perfectly achieved.

The dichotomy between ideal and practice is an old one, and has
been applied to any number of political, historical, and even artistic
terms. Was the United States really a democracy in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries when slavery was legal and women were denied
the franchise? Has there ever been a perfect democracy, even in fifth-
century bc Athens? Is there even a definition of “democracy” that
would apply to all states claiming such status? For that matter, are
there universally accepted definitions of “freedom” or “class”?
Obviously, to insist on the perfect implementation of political ideals
would make all classifications impossible.

The totalitarian dictators did not in fact control every facet of their
respective countries’ existence. They were, however, free to reach
major decisions without consulting or by ignoring the advice of other
individuals or institutions. They were not bound by any laws or cus¬
toms and were unlikely to be affected by appeals to conscience, senti¬
ment, or pity. They were not even restrained by official ideology
because they alone decided what the ideology dujour should be; they
did not hesitate to reverse previously held ideological positions how¬
ever much they might deny it.

In many ways, totalitarianism was a secularized religion complete
with charismatic leaders, sacred books (with old and new testaments),
prophets, martyrs, saints, disciples, heretics, hymns, ceremonies, pro¬
cessions, and concepts of heaven and hell. True believers claimed to

The Ideological Foundations

be in possession of the one revealed truth that could not be disputed
on the basis of rational arguments. There were chosen people who
belonged to the “right” class or race and nonbelievers and nonfavored
groups who had to be eradicated from the righteous community by
instruments of inquisition. The young were to be thoroughly indoc¬
trinated in the new “religion” so that it would be perpetuated indefi¬
nitely. It is no wonder, therefore, that many traditional religious
leaders soon realized that they were competing with the totalitarian
leaders and parties for the very soul of the people.

Comparisons between democratic and totalitarian ideals help in the
understanding of both. Surprisingly, there are some superficial similar¬
ities. Totalitarian regimes, like democracies, claimed to rule on behalf
of the governed but were “unhindered” by the “divisiveness” of
parliamentary states. Hitler and Mussolini (though not Stalin) also
resembled democratic leaders in wanting to be photographed mingling
with the “masses.” They had elections, or at least plebiscites (in the case
of Nazi Germany). Both systems even had constitutions. The similar¬
ities, however, are far more apparent than real. Totalitarian regimes
were ultra-paternalistic. They decided what was in the best interests of
their citizens, not the citizens themselves, whose willingness or ability
to do the right thing was very much in doubt. Elections consisted only
of unopposed candidates selected by the totalitarian party. Constitutions,
if not ignored (as in the case of Nazi Germany), existed to protect the
government, not to insure the rights of individuals against the
government, as in democracies. Most important, democracies are char¬
acterized by an optimistic philosophy of human nature; in the tradition
of late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British and French enlight¬
ened philosophers, humans are thought to be by nature rational. As
such they are capable of managing their own affairs with only minimal
assistance from a government. Human progress for all nationalities, if
not certain, is at least possible. Totalitarian philosophy, however, holds
that humans are by nature either too irrational or too ignorant to be
entrusted with self-government.

Another way of understanding twentieth-century totalitarian
dictatorships is to compare them with their nontotalitarian predeces¬
sors. Arbitrary, authoritarian, and brutal forms of government, which

The Ideological Foundations

censor all forms of literature and minimize individual rights, are as
old as civilization itself. The first Napoleonic regime in the early
nineteenth century also resembled the totalitarian dictatorships in its
charismatic leadership. But these other forms of despotism depended
on the tolerance of the army, church, or business interests. Moreover,
they allowed considerable freedom of expression so long as it did not
threaten the regime. Their leaders were often constrained by customs
or a sense of responsibility to God. The totalitarian dictatorships were
not satisfied with the mere absence of opposition; they demanded
positive support, especially from the shapers of public opinion: jour¬
nalists, teachers, authors, and artists. The lack of rapid and mass
forms of communications, together with high illiteracy rates, made it
impossible for pre-twentieth-century regimes to control their sub¬
jects physically and intellectually. Finally, as alluded to above, earlier
dictatorships usually lacked the religious zeal and desire to completely
transform society.

The totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century had at
their disposal mass-circulation newspapers, mass-produced posters,
telegraph machines, telephones, automobiles, railroads, airplanes,
cinemas, radios (and more recently television sets), and mandatory-
attendance state schools. Orders from dictators could be transmitted
to the lowliest government, party, and military officials instantly. No
village was too remote to be outside the reach of the regime’s instru¬
ments of propaganda.

Marxism - Leninism - Stalinism

Although most scholars believe that there were important common
denominators between the regimes of Communist Russia, Fascist
Italy, and Nazi Germany, none would argue that they were without
major differences in their beliefs and practices.

The Soviet dictators - Lenin, Stalin, and their successors - like
their fellow autocrats in Italy and Germany, claimed to follow
an immutable and indeed scientific ideology. The works of the
nineteenth-century German economic philosopher Karl Marx

The Ideological Foundations

were supposed to be the foundation of communist ideology. In reality,
first Lenin and then Stalin changed Marx’s ideas almost beyond
recognition (see Plate 1). Marx, especially in his famous work Das
Kapital, argued that a class struggle had existed throughout history
and would soon produce an international revolution of industrial
workers. However, he had no blueprint for the future communist
utopia beyond his belief that the means of production would be
owned in common, thus preventing any further exploitation of one
class by another. Even Lenin, prior to his seizure of power in the fall
of 1917, had no practical plans for postrevolutionary government
beyond vague concepts, such as the nationalization of industries,
large-scale and communal farming, and central economic planning.

Lenin and also Stalin inherited from Marx unverifiable beliefs
about the behavior of various social groups, which were given the
status of scientific laws and were hence beyond dispute or public
opinion. They also inherited from the master an unscrupulous atti¬
tude toward anyone whom they perceived to be impeding the
development and consolidation of the revolution.

Lenin, unlike Marx and his more orthodox followers in Russia who
were known as Mensheviks, was unwilling to wait for the Industrial
Revolution to follow its natural course in Russia, which was by far the
most economically backward of the major European states at the
beginning of the twentieth century. By promising to turn over confis¬
cated noble lands to peasants, Lenin believed that he could at least
gain the temporary support of peasants - for whom Marx had had
nothing but contempt - and thus bring about an early revolution. Nor
did he believe that the proletariat was capable of organizing any kind
of revolution on its own. It needed instead to be led by a small group
of dedicated professional revolutionaries over which he would
exercise dictatorial control. The party worked for the interests of the
proletariat whether the latter recognized it or not. Thus, Lenin quickly
abandoned Marx’s idea of majority rule. His creed was out of step
with contemporary developments in Marxism in western Europe, but
very much in the tradition of Russian authoritarianism and secret
conspiracy. Lenin’s drastic alteration of Marxism was to have omi¬
nous consequences for the future. Unlike the regimes of Italy and

The Ideological Foundations

Germany, which came to power by at least pseudo-constitutional
means, in the Soviet Union the Communists were able to achieve
power only through the use of force and were, with the partial
exception of World War II, never certain of popular support.

Though intolerant of overt opposition, Lenin was at least willing to
put up with discussions within the Bolshevik party, which he founded
in 1903. Dissidents might be demoted, or even expelled from the
party, but they were not killed. Stalin moved one step beyond Lenin.
Under Stalin, meaningful discussion within what by then was called
the Communist party soon came to an end. The use of terror was no
longer confined to non-Communists, but was now also directed
against those within the party itself.

Lenin and Stalin did resemble Marx in foreseeing a much greater
role for the postrevolutionary state in the economic life of Russia than
Mussolini in Italy or Hitler in Germany. To some degree they had lit¬
tle choice because the Russian bourgeoisie was so weak. Not only
were all the factories and other means of industrial production owned
by the state, but so too was all the agricultural land, which was culti¬
vated in large collective farms. Uprooting 120 million peasants from
their ancestral homes would require far more force than the relatively
modest economic plans envisaged by Mussolini and Hitler. Indeed, it
required a veritable civil war in which there were literally millions of
casualties. It also required a bureaucracy and police apparatus far
larger than those of the other two dictatorships. Excess was the very
essence of what became Stalinism. At the height of the Stalinist terror
in the 1930s, an estimated one in every eight Soviet men, women, and
children was shot dead or sent to a labor camp, where many died.

Fascism and Nazism

Whereas the Soviet Communists saw their movement as an instru¬
ment of progress for all humanity, the Fascists and Nazis made little
attempt to appeal to other nationalities, believing that alien races
could never be assimilated. Superficially, the ideology of the Fascists
in Italy was almost diametrically opposed to communism. In fact,

The Ideological Foundations

both Fascists and Nazis (often generically lumped together as “fas¬
cists” with a small f) made anticommunism or anti-Marxism (to
include social democratic parties) a major part of their programs.
Here, chronology is important. By the time the Fascist and Nazi
parties were born in 1919, the Communists had already seized power
in Russia, were engaged in a brutal civil war, and had attempted to
carry their revolution deep into Poland.

Consequently, fascism in both Italy and Germany arose in an
atmosphere of anticommunist hysteria. If the Communists were
international in their outlook and appeal (though in practice they
were frequently nationalistic), the fascists were militantly national¬
istic. If the Communists favored the industrial working class and
sought to destroy private property along with the middle and upper
classes, the fascists (at least in Germany) called for a classless “peo¬
ple’s community” (in German, Volksgemeinschaft) and the protec¬
tion of private property. If the Communists were outspoken atheists,
the fascists, on the whole, pretended to be the defenders of
Christianity. If Marxists, in theory, wished to emancipate women,
fascists would protect them from the evils of politics and glorify
their traditional role as homemakers and prolific mothers. Despite
these apparently diametrically opposed views, however, the prac¬
tices of communists and fascists turned out, in many cases, to be
remarkably similar.

Fascism in both Italy and Germany was more than simply anticom¬
munism. It was also passionately opposed to the liberal, democratic,
parliamentarian values of the Western democracies, which dated
back to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the French
Revolution. Fascists believed that such values had exalted the rights of
individuals at the expense of the community. In the words of a Nazi
slogan, Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz (“The common good comes
before the good of the individual”). Although unwilling to go nearly
as far as the communists in outlawing private property, fascists were
equally intolerant of diversity and just as filled with hatred and resent¬
ment. Like the communists, they saw violence as unavoidable. The
fascists promoted considerably more control of their economies than
was acceptable in the West, at least prior to World War II. Capitalists

The Ideological Foundations

were allowed to prosper in the fascist states, but only if they cooper¬
ated with the aims of the political authorities.

The two fascist states, however, differed significantly from each
other, as well as from Communist Russia and the democratic West.
Mussolini was very much interested in pursuing old-fashioned colo¬
nialism in Africa and in creating a new, albeit smaller, Roman Empire
around the Mediterranean in places like Albania, Greece, Tunisia,
Nice, Malta, and Corsica. His glorification of warfare as an exalting
and purifying experience found no echo in the Soviet Union and even
went beyond the public pronouncements of Hitler, at least before
World War II. In spite of his constant touting of the virtues of war,
Mussolini was woefully inadequate in his preparations for combat.
Hitler, for his part, professed a love of peace, until at least 1938, while
accelerating the rearmament of Germany. Finally, fascism and Nazism
differed sharply on the subject of race. Racism and anti-Semitism
were not part of fascist ideology until 1938, and when they were
finally introduced were unpopular with many Italians in spite of the
many exceptions allowed by the law.

For Hitler, race was as central to an understanding of history as the
class struggle was for Marxists. To him it was even more important
than nationalism, although throughout the 1920s and 1930s he liked
to pose as a traditional nationalist who wanted nothing more than to
reunite all nearby ethnic Germans in his Third Reich. Hitler’s philos¬
ophy borrowed heavily from nineteenth-century racists; he admitted
a debt only to the anti-Semitic composer Richard Wagner. Hitler was
anxious to show that his racist ideas were thoroughly grounded in
German history but, unlike the Communists, neither he nor Mussolini
claimed to have an infallible ideological founding father apart from
themselves.

The Nazis believed that there was a definite racial hierarchy among
humans: they and other “Nordics” (a term often used interchange¬
ably with “Aryans”) such as the Scandinavians, Dutch, and Anglo-
Saxons of Britain and the United States, were at the top and
represented the forces of good. Mediterranean people such as the
Italians and French came next, followed by the Slavs (Russians, Poles,
etc.), and finally Africans, gypsies, and Jews, who were definitely at

The Ideological Foundations

the bottom. The Jews, who for them represented the forces of dark¬
ness, differed from other “inferior races” because, far from being
“lazy” or “stupid,” they were hardworking and diabolically clever in
their business and professional practices. Worse, they were con¬
spiring to take over the world and were therefore the mortal enemies
of unsuspecting Aryans. Asians, particularly the Japanese, did not
easily fit into the Nazis’ racial hierarchy. The problem was solved
when Japan became a German ally, after which the Japanese were
dubbed “honorary Aryans.”

Racism, as will become readily apparent in the pages that follow,
was fundamental to both the domestic and foreign policies of Hitler’s
Germany. It led directly to the discrimination against, and the segre¬
gation, deportation, and finally extermination of, the German Jewish
population, and later to the slaughter of Jews in other European coun¬
tries. It was also behind the Nazis’ euthanasia program which resulted
in the murder of tens of thousands of other groups of “racial infe¬
riors,” including the mentally ill, the physically handicapped, and
homosexuals. Finally, it was racism that tempted Hitler to invade the
Soviet Union because he became convinced that it was dominated by
Jews, who he believed could not hope to build or run a state capable
of stopping the German army.

Hitler’s expansionist plans were much more ambitious than
Mussolini’s, although both dictators were influenced by nineteenth-
century ideas about living space, or Lebensraum. Hitler was enor¬
mously impressed by the three great empires of his day, those of the
British, the French, and the Americans. He feared both American
power and cultural influence, but admired what he regarded as
America’s ruthless conquest of a huge land mass replete with enor¬
mous natural resources, at the expense of its indigenous population,
which was similar to the British colonization of Australia and New
Zealand. Hitler’s “Wild West” was Ukraine in the east, an area he
imagined Germans and other Nordic peoples would be willing to col¬
onize. Ukraine seemed to be the perfect place to colonize because of
its fertile soil, relatively low density of population (or so he imagined),
and tolerable climate. Such an area, which was larger than Germany
itself, would enable the Reich’s population to grow to 250 million in a

The Ideological Foundations

century; but this German and Germanized population would be eco¬
nomically independent. Ukraine would not necessarily have been
Hitlers final conquest. He believed that a healthy population was one
which was always increasing and which would continually require
new land in order to grow its food. He had no confidence in Germany’s
ability to increase its agricultural productivity and would probably
have been astonished to learn that even West Germany, prior to
German reunification, had been able to provide most of its own agri¬
cultural needs with little more than half the territory of his Germany.
In any event, for Hitler there were only two possibilities: limitless
expansion or utter ruin.

It should be noted that Hitler’s own racist and expansionist ideas
were a form of contemporary Social Darwinism. Charles Darwin, a
nineteenth-century English biologist, published his theory of natural
selection, or biological evolution, On the Origin of Species, in 1859.
According to Darwin, only those individuals of each species in the
animal and plant kingdoms that had characteristics best suited to
their environment would live long enough to reproduce and thereby
pass those “successful” characteristics on to their offspring. Thus,
only the fittest of each species would survive the struggle for existence.
An English social scientist named Herbert Spencer extrapolated what
Darwin had written and then applied a similar notion to human
society, in which he saw individuals, nations, and even entire races all
competing for survival. Spencer’s social Darwinist ideas were at the
height of their popularity when Hitler was growing up around the
turn of the twentieth century, and they permeate his famous book
Mein Kampf which he wrote in the mid-1920s. Hitler interpreted the
ideology of Social Darwinism literally, frequently assigning the same
task to two people on the basis that the fitter of the two would per¬
form the job better. At the end of his life he also reached the (for him)
logical conclusion that the Slavic Russians, having defeated the
Germans, must be racially superior and hence more fit to survive.

Some historians have regarded Nazi Germany as backward looking
in contrast to Fascist Italy, which they view as forward looking. It is
true that the Nazis had a soft spot for peasants and the simple rural
life, and even attempted to create a back-to-the-farm movement.

The Ideological Foundations

They also hated modem music and art, and even frowned on some
modern medical practices. By contrast, Mussolini was committed to
modern architecture and technology, often bragging about his air
force setting new speed records. The differences in outlook of the two
regimes were, however, superficial and not unusual. A-back-to-the-
farm movement also existed in the United States during the 1930s,
and many Americans to this day tend to view life on farms and in
small towns as being more virtuous than life in big cities. In any event,
many historians have pointed out that Hitler’s foreign policy could
only be achieved by a modern, mechanized army, and not by peasants
carrying pitchforks.

Neither Fascist Italy nor Nazi Germany can be easily categorized as
either revolutionary or reactionary, traditional or modernistic,
backward looking or forward looking. Both clearly contained all of
these elements. Even Communist Russia cannot be easily pigeon¬
holed. Though it denounced everything about the tsars, it became
profoundly conservative during and after the reign of Stalin.

The dictators of all three totalitarian states took their ideologies very
seriously, even though they were willing to change them for tactical
purposes whenever it suited their fancy. All three of them spoke of
creating a new utopia based on national renewal and a single totali¬
tarian party. Ironically, they enjoyed their greatest successes when
they were not driven by ideological considerations, and they met their
greatest catastrophes precisely at those times when they sought to put
their most extreme ideological concepts into practice.

The Seizure of Power

They all took advantage of domestic crises and the divisions of
their enemies.

Totalitarian dictatorships were established in Russia, Italy, and
Germany in part because of long-term authoritarian traditions that
already existed in all three countries, and in part because of more
immediate political and economic crises. Otherwise, the circum¬
stances in which the three totalitarian parties came to power varied
substantially. The Bolsheviks (as they were still called until 1918) took
over the most backward great power of Europe, in the middle of a
disastrous war. The Fascists attained power in 1922, three years after
the end of World War I, in what was only a partially industrialized
country. The Nazis took the reins of power in one of the most indus¬
trially and educationally advanced countries in the world, but not
until 1933 when Germany was in the throes of the Great Depression.
In each case the totalitarian party was in a minority when it attained
power but faced an opposition that was too divided to stop its ascent.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

The Seizure of Power

Russia on the Eve of Revolution

Although it was not totalitarian, because it did not seek to mobilize
the masses prior to the Great War, tsarist Russia was very definitely
autocratic. Under the tsars Russia had never experienced the liber¬
ating influences of the Renaissance, the Reformation, or (for the most
part) the Enlightenment, which had so deeply altered the political,
cultural, social, intellectual, and religious life of western and central
Europe. Until 1864, there was no local self-government in Russia and
no national parliament until 1906. The state had dominated the
Russian Orthodox Church since the reign of Peter the Great in the
early eighteenth century. The government also censored the press and
limited the right of assembly. The state was typically totalitarian in
being supported by a huge bureaucracy, a powerful army, and a secret
police. The main limitations on its power were not constitutional but
technical. It simply lacked efficient means of thought control as a
result of its own technological backwardness.

The tsarist government was also the state’s largest employer, and it
initiated the industrialization of the country in the 1880s. Although
this government-directed modernization was necessary to prevent
Russia from falling even further behind the West, it had some distinct
drawbacks. The already deep divisions between the minority of rich
and the majority of poor grew, as did differences between industrial¬
ists and workers, workers and peasants, the highly educated few and
the 55 percent who were still illiterate. Even differences between the
majority of ethnic Russians and non-Russians grew, as the national
minorities became more aware of their own identities.

Increased education in the second half of the nineteenth century
meant that those with advanced educations, especially if they had had
an opportunity to travel in the West, became increasingly embar¬
rassed by their country’s backwardness. With no democratic means of
bringing about meaningful changes, violent revolution seemed to be
the only viable alternative. Such a revolutionary opportunity came in
1905, following Russia’s humiliating defeat at the hands of Japan.
However, the Revolution of 1905 failed to satisfy either the democrats
or the more radical revolutionaries.

The Seizure of Power

Marxist historians have long argued that a proletarian revolution
had been inevitable in Russia with or without the coming of World
War I. Western scholars have been divided on that issue. In any event,
it is safe to say that Russia’s entry into the war made a national revolu¬
tion far more likely. Its defeat at the hands of Britain and France in the
Crimean War in the 1850s revealed its backwardness, and soon led to
the emancipation of the serfs as a means of promoting modernization
through social mobility. The consequences of Russia’s defeat by Japan
have already been noted. But it was World War I that proved fatal to
the Russian monarchy. Although Russian losses between 1914 and the
overthrow of the tsar in 1917 were proportionately smaller than those
of Britain and France, they were still huge in absolute terms - 6 mil¬
lion people killed. Moreover, Russia’s World War I casualties were
often the result of poor leadership or the lack of weapons and ammu¬
nition, which Russian industries could not produce in adequate
numbers.

On the eve of the revolution, and in the middle of World War I,
Russia remained the only belligerent country with no system of food
rationing, so that during the conflict the poor were desperately hungry
while the rich remained well fed. Ultimately, it was this shortage of
food that led women, tired of standing in long lines, to riot in the
capital of Petrograd (earlier and again today known as St Petersburg).
By this time even the army, the police, the civil servants, the landed
gentry, and the leading figures of business and finance - the groups on
which the Romanovs had long depended - had become disgusted with
the tsar’s incompetence and his reliance on the advice of his German-
born wife and the peasant faith healer-turned-courtier Grigori
Rasputin, whose last name in Russian means “debauchee.” The bread
riots, which occurred in March 1917, set in motion a chain of events
that brought down the 300-year-old Romanov dynasty within a week
and led to the establishment of a middle-class democratic Provisional
Government out of the remnants of the Duma. A revolutionary
conspiracy had long sought to overthrow the regime, but in the end it
was disgruntled housewives who took the lead.

Meanwhile the revolutionary Lenin had been biding his time in
Swiss exile. Born Vladimir Ulianov in 1870, Lenin had a maternal

The Seizure of Power

grandfather who was a baptized Jew, a fact that was carefully hidden
from the public. But unlike the other totalitarian dictators, he showed
no evidence of harboring a racial anti-Semitism. He also differed
from the other dictators in that he came from a loving, prosperous
family and had a happy childhood. His father, a school teacher, was a
loyal tsarist official, and his mother taught him the rudiments of
German, English, and French. He went on to earn a law degree with
honors at the University of St Petersburg.

A defining moment in Lenin’s life came at the age of 17 when his
elder brother, Alexander, was executed for planning to assassinate
Tsar Alexander III. Lenin’s path to respectability was now barred, and
an unbridgeable gulf opened between him and the regime that
had taken his brother’s life. He began reading Marx when he was 18
and formed a Marxist group a year later. In 1895 he was arrested for
trying to publish an underground Marxist newspaper. After 14 months
in a St Petersburg prison he was sent to Siberia for three more years of
imprisonment, during which he had plenty of time to read and write.

Lenin spent much of the time between 1900 and 1917 in exile in
Switzerland reading history, economics, and philosophy and writing
revolutionary tracts. By 1914 he had begun to doubt that another
Russian revolution would occur in his lifetime. The outbreak of World
War I changed his mind, however, as he immediately recognized its
revolutionary potential. Shortly after the tsar’s overthrow, the German
High Command facilitated Lenin’s return to Russia (by rail), in the
hope that he would create havoc in his native land. The opportunities
to do so were increased by the existence of two competing authorities -
the Provisional Government and the Soviet. This chaos could be
exploited by Germany to bring to an end the fighting on the Eastern
Front.

Though the Bolsheviks were much too weak to seize power on
their own when Lenin arrived in Petrograd, they quickly gained pop¬
ularity thanks to his demagogic “April Theses,” which called for
“Bread, Land, and Peace.” Specifically, Lenin demanded an immediate
end to the war, the transfer of factories and industries from capitalists
to committees of workers (called soviets), and the redistribution of the
lands of noble estates to the peasants, even though the Bolsheviks

The Seizure of Power

were adamantly opposed to private ownership of the land. The
Provisional Government could not accede to any of these demands
without alienating its own supporters and its Western allies, or vio¬
lating its own legalistic principles. A Russian summer offensive soon
turned into a rout, leaving the government essentially defenseless.

Ignoring the Bolshevik party’s minority status (except in Petrograd
and Moscow) and refusing to form alliances even with other socialist
parties, Lenin overcame heated opposition within his own party to an
early revolution by threatening to resign and by appealing to the rank
and file as well as to the masses. His view ultimately prevailed, and in
November the Bolsheviks overthrew the Provisional Government,
housed in the tsar’s Winter Palace (Plate 2). Thus the capital of the
largest country in the world fell to a handful of fighters in little more
than a day with the loss of just six lives. A week later, Moscow was
taken with the loss of no more than a few hundred lives. Lenin’s
energy, organizational skills, speaking ability, and ruthless will to
power had finally paid off. However, millions more would die before
the Bolsheviks were fully entrenched in power.

The Establishment of the Soviet Dictatorship

Within days, the Bolsheviks had managed to alienate large numbers of
would-be supporters. Private citizens lost control of their property,
which was now claimed by the state. Banks became a state monopoly
and only small withdrawals were permitted. Private trade, even for
small shopkeepers, was forbidden. Peasants were required to sell grain
to the government at whatever price the government chose to pay.
Having long demanded the election of a Constituent Assembly, in
which every party would be proportionately represented, the Bolsheviks
did permit the election to take place a few days after they came to
power. But the freest election in Russian history resulted in their party
coming in a poor second, garnering only 9.8 million votes of 41.7
million cast. Consequently, the Bolsheviks broke up the assembly with
the use of 200 pro-Bolshevik sailors, and outlawed future meetings of
the body following its first and only meeting in January 1918.

The Seizure of Power

The Bolshevik coup was also followed by the systematic elimina¬
tion of all competing political institutions using wartime methods
such as terror, propaganda, and mass mobilization. The liberal press
was suppressed; the entire judicial system, including the supreme
court, or Senate, was replaced by “peoples courts.” Local governments
were abolished; opposition parties were outlawed; and provincial
governments, universities, learned societies, and clubs were all
Bolshevized in a matter of eight months.

So precarious was Lenin’s grip on power that the survival of the
regime quickly replaced world revolution on his list of priorities. In
order to concentrate exclusively on domestic affairs, Lenin overrode
the objections of other Bolsheviks and authorized the separate Treaty
of Brest-Litovsk with Germany and its allies in March 1918, whereby
Russia lost 1.3 million square miles and 62 million people. Most of the
territory acquired during the previous two centuries, from Finland to
Ukraine and the Caucasus, was surrendered, at least temporarily.
Lenin thought the sacrifice was justified, as he expected proletarian
revolutions to occur in those regions soon. The treaty was unpopular
with Russian nationalists, however. Other Russians objected to the
terror of the secret police, to continued food shortages, and to gov¬
ernmental confiscation of peasant foodstuffs. By May 1918, the
Bolsheviks had provoked a full-scale civil war that lasted for nearly
three years.

The Bolsheviks, who officially changed their name to Communists
in March - the same month in which they moved the nation’s capital
to Moscow - were opposed by a huge number of groups collectively
known as the “Whites.” The Whites were supported by the Russian
Orthodox Church which acted virtually as their propaganda arm,
monarchists, big landowners, the middle class, some peasants, nation¬
alists seeking self-determination for their people, and even moderate
socialists like the Mensheviks. However, even though these groups
were numerous, they were very divergent, lacked a clear-cut program
especially with regard to agricultural land, and were not always wil¬
ling to cooperate with each other. In contrast, the Communists, or the
“Reds,” were highly organized and homogeneous, controlled the
major industrial centers, and held interior lines of communications,

The Seizure of Power

especially between Moscow and Petrograd, which facilitated the shift¬
ing of troops to endangered fronts. Support given by big landowners
and monarchists to the Whites alienated most of the peasantry, who
feared losing the land that had recently been confiscated. Additionally,
the interventionist aid given to the Whites by the British, French,
Americans, and Japanese proved more beneficial to Bolshevik propa¬
ganda than to the Reds’ opposition.

By the beginning of 1921, 9 million people had been killed in the
Civil War itself and another 5 million, mostly peasants, had died as a
result of a famine caused by the government’s requisitioning of crops.
To these figures can be added the 6 million Russian soldiers who died
in World War I. Finland, the Baltic States, and Poland were lost by
1921. However, Ukraine and the states in the Caucasus were reincor¬
porated into what, after 1922, was called the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, or the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, the Communists were
now firmly in power.

Although they had gained power, the Communists had alienated
an enormous number of people in the process. The opponents
included the nobility, who lost their estates; the bourgeoisie, who lost
their businesses; the peasantry, who had had their crops confiscated
or purchased at artificially low prices; and even the industrial workers,
whose trade unions had been abolished. Between 14,000 and 20,000
church officials and active laymen were shot during Lenin’s regime,
and ecclesiastical land was confiscated by the officially atheistic
authorities. Tens of thousands of scientists, writers, doctors, and
agronomists were deported or fled the nation, as did all of the nobility.
Altogether, around 3 million Russians had left Russia by the end of
the Civil War. Foreign governments were outraged by the Communists’
indifference to international law and normal diplomatic relations.
They were particularly incensed by Soviet attempts to incite
Communist revolutions on their territory. Not even the Polish prole¬
tariat wanted to be liberated by the Russians.

The creation of these domestic and foreign enemies created a kind
of siege mentality within the Communist party. Now nothing could
be done that might weaken the party. Only through strict party disci¬
pline, terror, and massive armaments could the regime survive, or so

The Seizure of Power

it appeared. This policy was strongly espoused by the regime until
Stalin’s death in 1953 and to a lesser extent almost to the end of the
Soviet Union in 1991 (see Plate 3). Only the nature of the threat, real
or imagined, changed from decade to decade.

By early 1921, the total area under cultivation was less than 60 per¬
cent of the prewar level, and the agricultural yield was about 38
percent of the prewar norm. Marketable surpluses had decreased
even more because of the replacement of relatively efficient large
noble estates with small farms. The output of mines and factories
in 1921 was just 21 percent of that in 1913. When previously loyal
sailors mutinied on Kronstadt Island near Petrograd in March 1921,
Lenin finally realized that his radical socialist program, called “war
communism,” which had nationalized industries and requisitioned
peasant foodstuffs, had gone too far. To consolidate Communist
power and restore the economy, he introduced a breathing spell
called the New Economic Policy, which ended grain requisitioning,
permitted peasants to sell their grain on the open market, and allowed
the operation of small-scale retail businesses with fewer than
20 employees. Larger businesses, transportation, and banking remained
government monopolies. By 1927 industrial production was back to
its prewar level. Pragmatism had triumphed over ideology, but only
temporarily.

When Lenin launched his NEP in the spring of 1921, he had little
more than a year left before suffering the first of three crippling
strokes, the last of which killed him in January 1924. Historians have
long debated his legacy. Had totalitarianism already been fully
established before his death or was it merely a possibility? Had com¬
munist ideology ceased to evolve? Did Stalinism in effect exist before
Stalin?

There are in fact some excuses for Lenin’s often ruthless words and
actions, at least between 1917 and 1921. The Communists were
engaged in a desperate struggle for survival against what were often
seemingly insurmountable odds. Revolutions and civil wars are not
noted for their moderation and toleration. It is possible that Lenin
regarded the Communist dictatorship as only temporary because,
according to communist theory, the state would eventually “wither

The Seizure of Power

away.” It can also be conceded that, unlike Stalin, he was neither a
sadist nor paranoid. Yet, even if they were intended for the unusual
circumstances in which he lived, most of Lenin’s political philosophy
and tactics were perpetuated and even greatly intensified after his
death. Lenin, perhaps relying on his own charisma to control the
Communist party, denounced “factionalism” and abolished the
internal democracy that had marked the organization’s early years,
probably because he distrusted the party’s rank and file.

In short, Lenin provided no safeguards against a dictatorship.
Trained as a lawyer, he did not uphold the law either in practice or as
an ideal. He did not allow free elections because he could not rely on
their outcome. Recognizing the unwillingness of the Soviet people to
follow the policies of the Communist party voluntarily, he was
dependent on terror and centralization even though the Bolsheviks
had denounced the tsar’s autocracy and (relatively mild) secret police
before the revolution. Under such circumstances, no genuine consti¬
tutionalism was possible. After intraparty democracy was abolished,
the party’s dictatorial control over the country attracted careerists and
fortune hunters. Perhaps worst of all, he established concentration
camps and authorized the killing of 200,000 Russians by the party’s
secret police, which he referred to as “our brave Cheka.” In comparison,
only 14,000 Russians had been executed in the last half century of
Romanov rule. By the time of Lenin’s death in 1924, at least the foun¬
dations of the Soviet brand of totalitarianism had been established: a
bureaucratic society, a monopolistic ideology which included mili¬
tant atheism, a terrorist secret police, the exploitation of labor, and a
tireless search for new enemies.

During the last year or so of his life, when Lenin was suffering from
cerebral arteriosclerosis, he began to realize that the party leaders he
had brought together to fight the tsar, carry out the revolution, and
win the Civil War were essentially a group of thugs. In his “Political
Testament,” which was not published in the Soviet Union until 1956
(although it had been published abroad earlier), he urged that he be
replaced by a collective leadership so that the defects of particular
individuals would be compensated by the merits of others. He had
become particularly suspicious of the party’s general secretary, Josif

The Seizure of Power

Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, better known since 1912 by his pseu¬
donym Joseph Stalin, or “man of steel.”

Stalin had been a useful ally of Lenin’s before and after the revolu¬
tion. Lenin admired Stalin’s toughness; his ability to get things done,
which included robbing banks to replenish the party’s coffers; his
indifference to long-winded arguments about ideology; and his
apparently blind loyalty. In April 1922 Lenin rewarded Stalin by
making him the party’s general secretary (to help maintain party
discipline). Lenin soon had reason to rue that decision, however.
Stalin made it virtually impossible for him to communicate with the
other party leaders during his last illness and was especially rude to
Lenin’s wife. In his Testament, Lenin suggested that Stalin be
removed from the party’s Central Committee altogether, but he was
so critical of all members of the committee in his Testament that it
suppressed the document and ignored his recommendation about
Stalin.

The long and tortuous struggle for power that began well before
Lenin’s death and did not end until December 1927 need not detain
the reader for long. Stalin’s biggest asset was the same as Hitler’s was
to be a few years later: his opponents were divided and had underes¬
timated him. Of all the famous Bolshevik revolutionaries, he was the
only one who had spent little time in the West, had demonstrated no
skills as an ideologue, and was a poor public speaker.

In any event, next to Lenin’s most likely successor, Leon Trotsky,
the flamboyant but not very amiable organizer of the Red Army dur¬
ing the Civil War, the colorless personality of Stalin seemed almost
reassuring to the other Communists. And unlike Trotsky, Stalin had
never publicly opposed Lenin, the founder of Bolshevism, whose
body, mummified like an Orthodox saint, was now on permanent
display in a huge mausoleum on Red Square in Moscow, the new
capital. Stalin also stood aside while his more moderate rivals, all of
whom were Jewish, fought among themselves. Biographers have also
noted how Stalin’s position as general secretary enabled him to
appoint trusted people to influential positions while purging his
rivals. Thus, he built a personal following on whom he could rely at
party Congresses. Stalin’s opponents, who had always supported a

The Seizure of Power

one-party dictatorship and had joined Lenin in rejecting faction¬
alism, were in no position to argue when they were outvoted. The
party Congress, once regarded as the sovereign body of the
Communist party, became a mere platform where Stalin announced
his policies.

Despite his reputation as an intellectual dullard, Stalin enunciated
in December 1924 the theory of “Socialism in one country,” skillfully
contrasting it with what he alleged was Trotsky’s theory of “Permanent
revolution.” Actually, Lenin himself, Stalin’s claims notwithstanding,
had never abandoned the idea of fomenting international revolutions,
and Trotsky did not favor offensive measures regardless of the cir¬
cumstances. But to party and nonparty members, weary of revolution
and war and anxious for stability, Stalin’s slogan sounded more cau¬
tious and patriotic. It implied that Russians could not only initiate a
socialist revolution in their own country, but also complete it without
having to wait for developments in other countries. Stalin thus made
himself look like a moderate who would not engage in dangerous
foreign adventurism or attempt any more radical social or economic
measures, such as the rapid collectivization of peasant lands.

By the close of 1927, Stalin’s dictatorship was fully established.
Henceforth he could be expelled only by force. The Politburo, the
party’s leading organ, had become his rubber stamp. Now, at last, he
no longer had to play the role of a moderate.

The Failure of Liberal Italy

Prior to World War I, Italy lacked a strong democratic tradition
among its masses even though it was a constitutional monarchy. Its
constitution, inherited from the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont, had
been handed down by King Charles Albert in 1848, rather than hav¬
ing been drafted by a popularly elected assembly. It allowed the king
to choose the prime minister if no party in the lower house of the
Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, had an absolute majority. No
such majority ever existed either before or after the unification of
Italy. The king also appointed the members of the Senate, and the

The Seizure of Power

members of the Chamber of Deputies were elected on a very narrow
franchise until 1912.

During this time the Italian standard of living, though generally
higher than Russia’s, especially in northern Italy, was far behind that
of western and central Europe. The Industrial Revolution was slow to
reach Italy because of its shortage of natural resources, its isolation
from the rest of Europe, and difficulties in domestic communications
due to its elongated shape, mountainous terrain, numerous islands,
and especially its sharp political divisions prior to 1860. Northern cit¬
ies like Milan, Turin, and Genoa were on an industrial par with the
more advanced parts of Europe, while most of southern Italy, which
had an illiteracy rate of 80 percent in 1900, would be referred to as a
developing country today.

Unlike Russia, Italy was not a quarrelsome multinational state.
However, owing to the lateness of its unification, regional antago¬
nisms were still quite severe in the early twentieth century. Only after
three wars, fought between 1859 and 1870, were the dozen or so
Italian states united into a single kingdom. Though the relative speed
of unification, after a millennium and a half of disunity, seemed
almost miraculous, many problems were left unresolved, and for that
matter still have not been fully resolved to this day. Differences bet¬
ween the relatively industrialized, secular, and well-educated north
and the agricultural, illiterate, clerical, and crime-infested south
remained as strong as ever in pre-World War I Italy. There were a
bewildering number of political parties, but none had a nationwide
constituency, which might have helped bridge local differences.
Regional politics was dominated by single parties, which inhibited
political competition and invited corruption.

Even the manner in which Italy was unified proved to be highly
unsatisfactory, especially in retrospect. It was achieved over the objec¬
tions of the papacy, which lost its lands in central Italy. And it required
the help of foreign intervention: French and Prussian victories over
Austria in 1859 and 1866 drove the Austrians out of northern Italy,
and the Prussian invasion of France in 1870 forced Napoleon III to
withdraw his troops from Rome, where they had been protecting the
pope since 1849. At no time did Italian troops themselves defeat the

The Seizure of Power

Austrians. Postunification efforts to appease nationalistic ambitions
by colonizing Ethiopia only ended in disaster when Italian troops
were humiliated by the Africans in 1887 and 1896.

Democracy itself failed to sink deep roots in Italy in the half century
preceding World War I. Universal manhood suffrage was finally insti¬
tuted in 1912, raising the electorate from 1.8 to over 5 million voters
(of whom 3 million were illiterate). However, the expansion of the
franchise came too late to give the Italian masses significant experi¬
ence in politics prior to the advent of Fascism. The elections of 1913
produced victories for both conservative and Marxist extremists. The
rich were mainly interested in keeping the poor politically impotent,
and the middle classes were more interested in the welfare of their
own cities than that of the country as a whole.

World War I only aggravated Italy’s many political and economic
problems. Staunchly Catholic Italians opposed intervention against
their coreligionists in Austria-Hungary; most Socialists favored neu¬
trality; most business people and the majority of peasants were indif¬
ferent. On the other side, some big industrialists such as steelmakers
and shipbuilders, as well as intellectuals, university students, the king
and his court, Nationalists, the liberal press, and the army all favored
intervention, even though collectively they were undoubtedly the
minority. Most of the Italian Parliament at first opposed intervention,
but its members had been kept in the dark about the government’s
negotiations that led to an alliance with the Entente Powers. In May
1915 Parliament was finally intimidated into voting for war by the
vociferous mobs in larger cities such as Milan (where Mussolini led
interventionists). Thus, Italy was the only belligerent to enter the war
with a badly divided populace, a schism that would only worsen fol¬
lowing the long and bloody conflict.

The interventionists assumed that the Italian army would be instru¬
mental in ending the war in just six months because a stalemate had
developed between the Entente Powers (Britain, France, and Russia)
and the Central Powers (primarily Germany and Austria-Hungary).
Incredibly, they had failed to consider how they would penetrate the
Alps, which provided Austria-Hungary with an almost impregnable
natural defense along its southwestern border with Italy. Ultimately,

The Seizure of Power

650,000 Italian soldiers lost their lives and another million were
wounded, in order to annex 750,000 Italian-speaking Austrians,
400,000 of whom would have been surrendered to Italy if it had
merely remained neutral.

Extravagant promises made by Italian politicians during the war
were almost certain to be unfulfilled by its outcome. Indeed, the Paris
Peace Conference of 1919 did not cede Italy all the territories it had
been promised in the secret Treaty of London, which the Entente had
used as bait to encourage Italian intervention. Italy received nearly all
the former Austro-Italians, along with three-quarters of a million
difficult-to-assimilate ethnic Germans (see Plate 4) and South Slavs
from the now defunct Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Nevertheless,
Mussolini and other disgruntled Italian Nationalists angrily referred
to the Treaty of St Germain with Austria as a “mutilated peace,”
symbolic of a spirit that contributed mightily to the birth and growth
of the Fascist party. Italy, though technically victorious, now joined
the ranks of defeated states like Germany, Austria, and Hungary,
which wanted to overturn what they felt to be an unsatisfactory peace
settlement.

The first postwar years saw the Italian economy deteriorate.
Loans from Italy’s wartime allies, which had kept its armament fac¬
tories producing, now ceased, causing massive unemployment.
Joblessness worsened with the return of over 3 million war vet¬
erans who helped drive up unemployment to 2 million by the end of
1919. Meanwhile, the currency collapsed and the cost of living
skyrocketed.

These economic problems need not have been insurmountable if
the major political parties had been able to agree on a common
course of action. The Socialists were probably in the best position to
help resolve the crisis. They became the largest party in Parliament
after the elections of November 1919 - which were based on a new
system of proportional representation - holding 156 of 506 seats in
a fractured Parliament. However, the party was badly divided,
refused to collaborate with other parties, and obstructed the passage
of progressive legislation in Parliament. Its left wing seceded in
January 1921 to form the Italian Communist party which wanted to

The Seizure of Power

make the crisis worse, not better. The resulting chaos would enable
the party to carry out an immediate revolution in order to establish
a dictatorship of the proletariat along the lines of the Russian
Bolsheviks. Even moderate Socialists were now torn between
reformism and Leninism, and refused to cooperate with other
political parties. A new Catholic Popular party lacked internal cohe¬
sion and could agree only on its opposition to anticlericalism. The
middle-class Liberal Party was led by the elderly Giovanni Giolitti,
who as prime minister for much of the early postwar period had
lacked sufficient popular support and was able to form governments
only by default.

Thus, the government would have been unable to take strong
action even if it were so inclined; but Giolitti thought the problems
would resolve themselves if left alone. Consequently, runaway infla¬
tion and class antagonisms went largely unchecked. Some peasants
seized lands, others refused to pay rents, and 1 million of them even
went on strike in 1920. Socialist leaders added to the chaos, which
peaked between December 1919 and the end of 1920, by organizing
numerous strikes that led to violence between the strikers and the
police. All of these conditions frightened the conservative middle and
upper classes and created enormous, albeit highly exaggerated, fears
of a Bolshevik revolution erupting in Italy.

The Birth and Triumph of Fascism

It was in the midst of this hysteria that the Fasci di Combattimento, or
Fascists, were founded by Benito Mussolini on March 23, 1919, five
days after a huge Socialist demonstration in Milan. Until 1915,
Mussolini had been a radical left-wing Socialist and editor of the par¬
ty’s official newspaper, Avanti. Soon after the outbreak of World War
I, he broke with the party over its policy of nonintervention. After
helping in a minor way (which he later claimed was crucial) to per¬
suade the government to enter the war, he served 17 months in the
army. He had engaged in violent behavior as an adolescent, and now
he worshipped violence because he felt it eliminated the weak.

The Seizure of Power

Mussolini’s prowar philosophy proved popular with veterans, who
initially made up the bulk of his new movement at a time when recent
memories of war were still distasteful to most Italians. Although
Mussolini’s military views were remote from Marxist orthodoxy, he
continued to preach the antimonarchism, anticlericalism, and anti¬
capitalism that he had subscribed to while he was a Socialist. He
advocated workers’ representation in industrial management and
higher inheritance taxes, and managed thereby to attract a few dissi¬
dent Socialists. He even concluded a pact with the non-Communist
left but was forced by local Fascist leaders to abandon it in favor of
courting business interests and the Nationalists. Here was a rare
example of a future totalitarian leader giving in to other officials
within the movement over a question of tactics.

The Fascists began growing rapidly in May 1920, after a series of
Socialist strikes. By February 1921, they had 100,000 members, and
by October 1922, when they seized power, they had 300,000 members
and perhaps 1 million sympathizers. Veterans were now joined by
white-collar workers such as teachers, lawyers, shopkeepers in pro¬
vincial towns, and rural middle-class landowners who were eager to
destroy the peasants’ Socialist affiliations. Unlike the Nazis, however,
few Fascist party members came from the peasantry or industrial
working class. In the meantime, the Fascists officially became a
political party and won 35 seats in the parliamentary elections of
November 1921. Now they emphasized nationalism, dropped their
antimonarchism to appease the king and the regular army, and
attracted young people seeking thrills and adventure by their use of
violence against Socialists.

By October 1922, the Fascists and their Nationalist allies still had
only 50 deputies in Parliament, but the opposition was so divided
that Mussolini decided it was time to take power. He organized bet¬
ween 17,000 and 26,000 of his paramilitary “Blackshirts” - the
formation and operations of which the government had done little or
nothing to control - in northern Italy for a so-called March on Rome,
which began on October 27. The men were not properly trained or
equipped. The army certainly could have prevented them from occu¬
pying local government buildings, police and railway stations, and

The Seizure of Power

telephone and telegraph offices if Prime Minister Luigi Facta and
King Victor Emmanuel III had stayed firm. Instead, the king took the
unprecedented step of refusing Facta’s request for the imposition of
martial law.

The king’s motivations have been the topic of great controversy, but
apparently he was concerned about the loyalty of the army and, to a
lesser degree, was influenced by rumors that there were actually
100,000 Blackshirts on their way. He was also aware of implicit Vatican
support of Fascism, possibly feared an all-out civil war, and was cog¬
nizant that all leading politicians believed it was necessary for
Mussolini to enter government. On October 30, he invited Mussolini -
who had remained in Milan, safely near the Swiss border, during the
march - to form a new government in what was technically, but not
morally, a constitutional move. The government had capitulated to
intimidation, and Mussolini, at the age of 39, became the youngest
prime minister in Italian history.

What were the underlying reasons that the Fascists managed to
come to power in little more than three and a half years after their
founding? Clearly, much of the explanation has to do with middle-
class fears - deliberately inflamed by the Fascists themselves, but also
given a certain credibility by the words and actions of Italian Socialists
and Communists - that what was transpiring in the Soviet Union
could very well occur next in Italy. A successful revolution had never
been a serious possibility, and, in any event, Socialist radicalism was
very much in decline in 1922 when the economy was improving.
There is often a gap, however, between reality and perception. Hence,
the middle and upper classes were still frightened by Marxist radi¬
calism and disgusted by the inactivity of liberalism and parliamen-
tarianism in the face of the evident danger. Fascism presented itself as
a third course, which was neither liberal nor Marxist, but nationalistic
and authoritarian instead. Traditionalists hoped that the Fascists
would reinforce the existing social order. Even many liberals thought
that Fascism was an inevitable, if only temporary, solution to a system
that was unable to cope with Italy’s problems. The Roman Catholic
Church was unwilling to oppose the Fascists because the latter were
anti-Marxist and favored aid to parochial schools. Nearly all

The Seizure of Power

nonsocialists believed, often unenthusiastically, that Mussolini was
the only realistic alternative to socialism, violence, anarchy, and
parliamentary stalemate. The Fascists’ promise that they would
actively solve Italy’s many economic, political, and social problems
also contrasted well with the passivity of Liberal Italy. (Fascist activism
would soon find an admirer in none other than Adolf Hitler.)

To attain power Mussolini had changed nearly all of his principles
(if he ever had any), or at any rate his policies. He had begun his career
as a radical Socialist, sharply at odds with the bourgeoisie, and came
to power at the head of a revolt of younger members of the bourgeoisie
who feared Marxism. He switched from being an antimonarchist to a
royalist, and gave up his (early) antimilitarism to flatter the army. He
exchanged internationalism for rabid nationalism, and from being
the defender of civil liberties he became their suppressor. He dis¬
avowed his early anticlericalism in order to curry favor with the
church, and abandoned the idea of breaking up large landed estates
even though just 13 percent of the rural population owned 87 percent
of the land. Of Mussolini’s early leftist ideology only some rhetoric
remained. He proclaimed the advent of a new society but left the
privileged classes untouched. But like other true believers, he discov¬
ered that the most difficult thing was to convert from fanaticism to
moderation. Depending on one’s point of view, Mussolini can be
described as an unprincipled, unscrupulous opportunist or as a clever
politician who knew how to adapt his policies to the shifting winds of
public opinion.

Mussolini was far from being a totalitarian dictator when he formed
a government in 1922. In his first cabinet only four ministers out of 14
were Fascists. The others were members of the Catholic Popular party,
an admiral, a Nationalist, and a liberal philosopher. Of the major
parties, only the Socialists and the Communists were not represented.
It is true that Mussolini’s position in this new government was strong;
in addition to being prime minister, he was foreign minister and min¬
ister of the interior. However, only the third ministry was extraordi¬
nary for an Italian head of government. The Italian Parliament gave
Mussolini’s government a big vote of confidence along with special
emergency powers for one year. This new government also found

The Seizure of Power

favor with the armed forces and most academicians, whereas other
people adopted a wait-and-see attitude. The Italian and foreign press
(especially that of the United States, but also those of Britain, France,
and Norway) soon became favorably disposed toward Mussolini,
believing that almost anything would be better than the previous five
postwar governments.

Mussolini was enormously fortunate, as Hitler would be a decade
later, in coming to power just before the beginning of a general upturn
in the European economy. During the first three years of Mussolini’s
rule unemployment declined by 73 percent. Controls and taxes on
industries were cut and the national budget was balanced. At a time
when the government was still a hybrid between authoritarianism
and parliamentarianism, Mussolini created a culture of efficiency, of
which the punctuality of trains became a famous (if exaggerated)
symbol. Strikes were ended and social peace restored. In general,
Italians experienced a sense of renewal. Among the few people who
were not happy with Mussolini’s first year in power were the Fascist
party’s most militant members, a situation that would be repeated in
Germany shortly after Hitler’s takeover of power. Even in this early
phase of Mussolini’s rule, he was gradually limiting civil liberties,
replacing police chiefs and key positions in the civil service with
Fascists, and eliminating all non-Fascist paramilitary groups. The
Blackshirts, meanwhile, were transformed into a national militia paid
by the state.

This transitional period ended with the kidnapping and murder of
Giacomo Matteotti, a moderate reformist Socialist and long-time
opponent of Mussolini and his Blackshirts. The murder caused a
national uproar in the still predominantly free press. Following so
soon after the violence of the election, it contradicted the common-
sense assumption that Fascism would moderate with the responsibil¬
ities of power. Mussolini’s prestige and popularity, which had appeared
unassailable a few days before, now hit an all-time low. The problem
was that for non-Fascists nothing had changed since Mussolini’s
appointment in 1922. Liberals, Catholics in the Popular ( Popolare)
party, and Socialists all still glared at each other with ill-disguised
contempt. The Catholic Church even warned the Popolari against

The Seizure of Power

collaborating with the Socialists. Worst of all, there was no one to take
the place of Matteotti as a courageous and outspoken opponent of the
regime.

At the end of 1924, local Fascist leaders finally jolted Mussolini out
of his stupor by demanding that he either reassert Fascism by a return
to the use of force, or resign. Mussolini himself became convinced
that even partly free institutions could not exist side by side with
Fascist ones. He feared that a free press, a vocal parliamentary oppo¬
sition, and a partly independent judiciary might someday topple the
regime. Consequently, he began to tighten censorship of the press as
early as July 1924. The real change came after a speech he gave to
Parliament on January 3,1925, when he disclaimed any complicity in
Matteotti’s murder, but defiantly accepted moral responsibility for it.
Henceforth, he proclaimed, Italy would be a totalitarian state and all
opposition parties would be disbanded. He dismissed all non-Fascists
from his cabinet. During the next few months, independent labor
unions, the free press, and all rival social organizations were elimi¬
nated. The Fascist or Roman salute with the outstretched arm was
made compulsory in Italian schools in December. Soon thereafter
schools were purged of teachers and administrators suspected of hav¬
ing anti-Fascist sympathies. In 1926 elected local governments were
replaced by appointed officials. Local governments were henceforth
carefully regimented, and the police and civil service were purged of
anti-Fascists. A Special Tribunal for political trials, from which there
was no appeal, was created, and a secret police was also established.
The Italian Parliament continued to exist, and even had a minority of
non-Fascist members; but Mussolini was no longer responsible to it.
Instead, he was responsible only to the king. However, the sympathetic
Victor Emmanuel III was more a potential than a real threat to
Mussolini’s authority prior to 1943.

Mussolini’s slogan now became: “Everything within the State.
Nothing outside the State. Nothing against the State.” This assertion
was actually more a boast than a reality because the Roman Catholic
Church, the army, high-ranking civil servants, and big business, in
addition to the king, were never completely eliminated by Mussolini as
independent forces. But what little overt, as opposed to theoretical,

The Seizure of Power

opposition remained after 1926 was repressed by the secret police, spe¬
cial courts, and the policy of the imprisonment of citizens without trial.
This elimination of all antiregime institutions, what the Nazis would
call Gleichschaltung (“coordination”) eight years later, was substantially
completed by the end of 1928. These changes had not come about by
some preconceived plan. Mussolini had simply responded to events,
like four assassination attempts against his life in 1925-6, and moved
with great tactical skill and some luck to turn them to his advantage.

Like Stalin, and Hitler a few years later, Mussolini was as much the
dictator of his ruling party as he was the dictator of the state. Even his
Blackshirts, who were so crucial in his coming to power, became an
anachronism with the disappearance of a serious political opposition
after 1926, although this elimination was actively promoted by
Mussolini, who was seeking diplomatic acceptance. Now the party
did not formulate policies; it merely implemented them. This does
not mean that belonging to the party was without advantages for its
1 million members in 1932 or its 2.6 million members in 1939.
These membership totals (which do not include another 20 million
members in subsidiary organizations) were not only a reflection of
the party’s political influence, but also of the privileges that member¬
ship entailed. In fact, official party membership was advisable for one
wishing to enter a profession, speak or write publicly, or engage in
various cultural activities. After 1935 it was mandatory for all civil
servants, including schoolteachers, and from 1940 it was required for
advancement in any career, as it was in Nazi Germany and the Soviet
Union. Few peasants joined the party even though they made up
about half the country’s population. Likewise, urban workers
remained grossly underrepresented in the party’s rank and file.

Germany and the Impact of World War I

In many ways the history of Germany prior to the triumph of totali¬
tarianism is remarkably similar to that of Italy. Both became unified
nation-states only during the third quarter of the nineteenth century
after failed attempts during the Revolutions of 1848-9. Consequently,

The Seizure of Power

regionalism was still strong in both countries well into the twentieth
century. Both states produced strong nationalists in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries that sought to overcome regionalism by
pursuing aggressive foreign policies and acquiring colonies. Both had
strong authoritarian traditions that inhibited the development of
democratic institutions, and rapidly growing populations, with large
numbers of people emigrating to the Western hemisphere, especially
between 1870 and 1914. And both had burgeoning Marxist parties in
the early twentieth century, which terrified the propertied bourgeoisie.

Of course, there were also substantial differences between the two
countries. The Industrial Revolution reached Germany nearly a half-
century earlier than Italy, in part because of Germany’s plentiful
supply of coal, navigable rivers, central location (on the continent),
and the Prussian-led customs union, which facilitated trade and
enlarged markets. However, Germany’s lack of natural defenses
exposed it time after time to invasion from neighboring France and
Russia, thus encouraging the growth of a national militarism,
something which never really took hold in Italy.

It is important, however, not to regard the emergence of totalitari¬
anism as an inevitable product of remote historical events or geog¬
raphy. Nationalism and imperialism were hardly unique to Germany
and Italy around the turn of the twentieth century. It would be diffi¬
cult, for example, to find a more aggressive exponent of nationalism
at this time than Theodore Roosevelt in the United States. And the
colonial empires of Germany and Italy on the eve of World War I were
modest compared to those of Britain and France or even Belgium,
Portugal, and the Netherlands. Although the Industrial Revolution
had caused social hardships in Germany, the government did more to
ease them than the British government did in the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. It is true that racism was growing in popularity
in late nineteenth-century Germany, but so too was it in many other
countries including France and the United States. It was the combination
of World War I, postwar political and economic developments, and
the unique personalities of Mussolini and Hitler, together with older
historical and intellectual traditions, that produced totalitarian
dictatorships.

The Seizure of Power

The most important common denominator for the rise of the total¬
itarianism in all three states was World War I, known at the time as
the Great War. Thanks to new weapons such as the machine gun,
killing had become industrialized - leading to the death of around
10 million military personnel and perhaps an additional 7 million
civilians. The enormous increase in the power of national govern¬
ments, even in democratic states such as the United Kingdom and
the United States, had radically transformed European society.
Governmental lies and censorship had become an integral part of war
propaganda. National resources were fully mobilized and rationed.
Where democratic traditions were weak, as in Russia, Italy, and
Germany, totalitarian controls appeared to be a natural and familiar
way of dealing with postwar crises.

Even though both the Germans and the Italians emerged from
World War I feeling frustrated and cheated, their experiences during
the war had been quite different. As already noted, Italy had entered
the war late and had done so voluntarily - albeit with a badly divided
population - hoping to pick up huge chunks of territory with relatively
little effort. But the effort turned out to be far from small and the
annexations much more modest than anticipated. Germany entered
the war at its onset, believing itself compelled to do so because of
Russia’s early and secret mobilization. The German army responded
by implementing its infamous Schlieffen Plan (named for an earlier
chief of the general staff) which called for the quick defeat of France,
within an expected six weeks, before the Russian mobilization could
be completed. The plan seemed fully justified in the eyes of most
Germans because it was the only apparent way to avoid fighting a
dreaded two-front war. However, its early implementation, before all
diplomatic means of avoiding the war had been exhausted, and its
violation of Belgian neutrality, to which Prussia (the core of the later
German Empire) had agreed in 1839, made Germany look like the
aggressor. This belief was especially strong among non-Germans who
were unaware of the significance (to Germany) of the Russian
mobilization.

Not only did World War I begin with a huge controversy, but it also
ended ambiguously, which again led to enormous arguments between
the victors and the vanquished. Traditionally, wars have concluded

Map 1 Boundary changes after World War I.

The Seizure of Power

with the victors firmly in control of the enemy’s capital or its strategic
fortresses and territories, with the defeated power no longer capable
of putting up an effective resistance. The armistice of November 11,
1918 took place under very different circumstances. In the east, both
Russia and Romania had signed separate treaties with the victorious
Central Powers, which now dominated vast territories stretching
from Finland through the Baltic States and Poland to Ukraine, an
empire that was later to inspire Hitler (see Map 1).

In the west, the German army had been slowly retreating since July,
but seemingly in good order. By November, the front was still in
France and Belgium. Historians have long known that the situation
for Germany was much worse than it appeared on the map. Its army
was exhausted, demoralized, and no longer capable of replacing its
losses, many of which were now due to desertions. No one was more
aware of the precarious situation than the chief of the general staff,
Erich von Ludendorff, who in late September 1918 insisted that
Emperor Wilhelm II bring the fighting to an early end before the
army collapsed altogether. Ludendorff also urged the formation of a
new and more popular government that would be responsible to the
Reichstag, or Parliament, thus creating a true democracy. Such a
government, he maintained, would be more likely to negotiate a
moderate peace and would enable the authoritarian imperial
government to avoid responsibility for the defeat.

All of these facts are now well known to scholars. Unfortunately,
they were not known at the time to the German people, who for four
years had been told by a very effective propaganda machine that the
German army was winning or at worst making only minor strategic
withdrawals. The German public was not fully aware of the growing
disparity of strength on the Western Front or the significance of the
collapse of the Balkan Front following the withdrawal of Bulgaria
from the war in late September 1918. The sudden end to the fighting,
which should have been called a surrender rather than an armistice,
and later the unfavorable Treaty of Versailles, appeared inexplicable.
Thus was born the “stab-in-the-back” legend promoted by a wide
range of conservative nationalists: the German army had not been
defeated in the field, but had been “sold out” by traitors, mostly Jews

The Seizure of Power

and Socialists, who had meekly capitulated to a hate-filled enemy
bent on destroying Germany.

The Treaty of Versailles was another subject of historical debate
that was to prove useful to rising German demagogues, and not just
those within the Nazi party. The treaty that was signed in Louis XIV’s
palace outside Paris on June 28,1919 required Germany to surrender
13 percent of its national territory, all of its colonies, 26 percent of its
coal reserves, and 75 percent of its iron ore, and to pay an unspecified
amount of reparations. The sum was later set at $33 billion (equal to
at least 25 times that amount - about $825 billion - in today’s currency,
for a country with a population about one-fifth the current population
of the United States) and was indeed intended to cripple Germany’s
already exhausted economy for decades. The victors justified the
enormous reparations on the grounds that Germany and its allies had
committed aggression in 1914. The treaty also reduced the German
army to 100,000 officers and men, a level too low even to maintain
domestic order against strikes and possible Communist uprisings. At
the time, the victors, for the most part, regarded the treaty as just if
not indeed generous. Virtually all Germans were equally convinced
that it was an instrument to suppress, exploit, and permanently
humiliate Germany. They also regarded the treaty as a betrayal of the
armistice terms, the famous Fourteen Points of President Woodrow
Wilson. Furthermore, the secret inter-Allied negotiations leading to
Versailles flatly contradicted one of the points which stipulated that
treaties ought to be “openly arrived at.”

The controversy over Versailles, which lasted throughout the
interwar period at both scholarly and popular levels, arose because
the treaty directly linked alleged German aggression to reparations
and because the Germans were never willing to admit that they had
been defeated militarily. In their eyes they had been cheated rather
than defeated. They believed that they had put down their arms vol¬
untarily on the basis of a compromise agreement that had later been
betrayed. With few exceptions - one being their long-time foreign
minister, Gustav Stresemann - they failed to see that the creation of a
large Poland provided them with a useful barrier against Communist
Russia, and that the West, including the United States, would need

The Seizure of Power

Germany as a key ally against the Soviet threat. Ultimately, not a few
historians and even statesmen in the West, especially in Britain and
the United States, came to accept the Germans’ anti-Versailles posi¬
tion and argued that their legitimate grievances should be addressed.

The Weimar Republic and the Rise
of the Nazi Movement

Knowledge of the origins of World War I, of the circumstances sur¬
rounding its conclusion, and especially of the controversy over the
Treaty of Versailles is absolutely essential to understanding the fate of
the new German Republic and the rise to power of Adolf Hitler. The
Versailles Treaty was not harsh enough to render Germany militarily
impotent forever. Ironically, its implementation, particularly with
regard to disarmament clauses, required German cooperation.
However, what came to be known unofficially as the “war guilt clause”
(Article 231), was bitterly resented by Germans, and reparations were
blamed, often unjustly, for every failure of the postwar German
economy. What the German people failed to understand was that the
direct economic consequences of the war were far more responsible
for Germany’s economic plight in the 1920s than the Treaty of
Versailles. To cite just one example, the economy was burdened in
1923 by the 4.5 million permanently disabled veterans, war widows,
and children orphaned by the war who collectively consumed over 18
percent of federal expenditure.

The new German state, commonly known as the Weimar Republic
after the city in central Germany where its constitution was drawn up
in 1919, was from birth truly crippled, though not mortally wounded.
Besides being made to bear the millstone of Versailles, the republic
was handicapped by its constitution. Although historians have some¬
times exaggerated this document’s inherent flaws, they were still sub¬
stantial. Foremost among them was its apparatus for proportional
representation. Designed to insure representation in the Reichstag for
every shade of public opinion, it assigned one parliamentary seat to
every party that could garner 60,000 popular votes, no matter how

The Seizure of Power

geographically scattered those votes might be. At the same time, the
Weimar constitution mandated that party secretaries, not the voters,
decide which politicians actually sat in Parliament.

Proportional representation produced a bewildering number of
parties. Often around 30 parties appeared on each ballot, a dozen or
so of which gained parliamentary seats. Consequently, no party ever
came close to winning an absolute majority, making every government
form a coalition of at least three parties - there were 20 such coali¬
tions in just 14 years. Decisive action, especially during crises, was
next to impossible. Small, often extremist, parties like the National
Socialists found it easy to gain representation, and their parliamentary
deputies enjoyed handsome salaries paid by the state, free travel on
trains, and immunity from arrest, all huge advantages for a poor,
young party struggling for recognition.

Historians have sometimes overemphasized the significance of
proportional representation in the ultimate failure of the Weimar
government. It has worked successfully in other countries including
Switzerland and the Scandinavian states, although it has created
serious problems in Israel. Moreover, proportional representation
was more a reflection of the deep political and social divisions in
German society than it was the cause of such divisions. Other defects
in the Weimar constitution, such as the president’s right to appoint
anyone chancellor in the absence of a parliamentary majority, and the
right of the president to grant a chancellor dictatorial powers in an
emergency, were designed to deal with a presumably temporary crisis
such as a Communist coup. No one could have anticipated in 1919
that these measures would eventually enable Adolf Hitler to come to
power legally and then rule by decree.

Once established, the Weimar Republic was never able to sink deep
democratic roots. It might have been able to overcome all the prob¬
lems associated with the Treaty of Versailles and the constitution if it
had enjoyed a decent amount of prosperity. Between its founding in
November 1918 and its demise in January 1933, it experienced at
most five years of modest prosperity, from the middle of 1924 to the
middle of 1929. Real income in 1928, the best year of the Weimar
Republic, was only 3 percent higher than it had been in 1913.

The Seizure of Power

Meanwhile real income had grown by 70 percent in the United States
and 38 percent in France. In addition, inflation - the worst in the his¬
tory of the Western world - reached a peak in November 1923 and
reduced the German mark to one-trillionth of its prewar value. Some
speculators made fortunes, but most people, especially in the tradi¬
tionally thrifty middle class, saw their lifetime savings evaporate -
and blamed the government for it.

Economic insecurity, as well as lingering anger over the Treaty of
Versailles, were perfect ingredients for both right-wing and left-wing
extremism in the Weimar Republic. Karl Marx had always considered
his native Germany the logical starting point for the proletarian revo¬
lution. Lenin also had high hopes that German workers would rise up
during or after the war. His expectations seemed justified when a
small group of Communists seized power in Bavaria in April 1919.
Though their rule lasted only three weeks, the hysterical reaction to it
on the part of the bourgeoisie lasted for over a decade.

It was in this setting of anti-Communist paranoia, bitterness over
the Treaty of Versailles, and growing inflation, that Hitler got his start
in politics. In 1919 Hitler was an absolute political nobody. He had
been born in the Upper Austrian town of Braunau am Inn in 1889.
His father died in 1903, and his mother, much to his distress, died
four years later. After dropping out of secondary school at the age of
16, Hitler spent six years painting picture postcards in Vienna before
moving to Munich in 1913. When World War I broke out he volun¬
teered for the military, serving as a regimental runner or courier. But
when the war came to a sudden end he was right back where he had
been in 1914, with no close family members or home and about to
face unemployment. How he transformed himself virtually overnight
from a lazy outsider with no future into a heroic leader is one of the
greatest mysteries of world history.

In September 1919, while still in the army, Hitler was given the
task of investigating what his superior officers thought was a
political party with a suspicious-sounding name: the German
Workers’ party, or DAR The DAP (which was one of 73 similar
groups in Germany) turned out to be insignificant in size and right
wing rather than left wing in its orientation, and the army soon lost

The Seizure of Power

interest in it. After giving an impromptu speech during his initial
contact with the party, Hitler was asked to join the party’s executive
committee in charge of recruiting and propaganda. He had finally
found a home and a profession. A young, unknown, poorly edu¬
cated foreigner like Hitler could have made his mark only in a small
party.

Thanks to Hitler’s speaking ability and his recruitment of people
who would be loyal to him, the DAP grew rapidly. By July 1921,
he had become so indispensable to the organization that he was able
to become its dictator, or Fiihrer (literally “leader” or “guide”), and to
eliminate the party’s internal democracy merely by threatening to
resign (much as Lenin had done within the Bolshevik party). (By con¬
trast, Mussolini did not gain dictatorial power over the Fascist party
until he became prime minister of Italy.) Hitler also added the words
“National Socialist” to the name “German Workers’ Party” - the
NSDAP or Nazi party for short (a combination of letters from the
German name National Socialist) - in an attempt to increase the par¬
ty’s appeal to both nationalists and socialists. Little more than two
years later, inspired by the Fascists’ successful March on Rome, Hitler
believed he was ready to seize power.

The infamous Beer Hall Putsch, in which he participated but did
not solely lead, turned out to be a fiasco, largely because local Bavarian
police and government authorities, unlike their counterparts in Italy,
did not remain passive during this attempted coup. Instead of seizing
power in Munich and using it as a base for a march on Berlin, as he
had planned, Hitler found himself in prison. In a normal state the
failure of the putsch should have marked the end of Hitler’s political
career. However, for Hitler, the putsch and his highly publicized trial
for treason a few months later turned out to be his moment in the sun.
Far from denying his responsibility for the move, he exaggerated it.
And far from throwing himself on the mercy of the court, he used
what had become a national forum to denounce the “November crim¬
inals” who had signed the armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. It was
impossible, he argued, to commit treason against traitors. Hitler was
convicted but given the lightest possible sentence - five years, of
which he served only 13 months.

The Seizure of Power

Hitler’s imprisonment during 1924 and for part of 1925, along with
his being legally forbidden to make public speeches until 1927, gave
him time to reflect on his failed tactics while entertaining some 500
visitors. His reflections resulted in a two-volume work published in
1925 and 1927 called Mein Kampf (“My Battle”). The book gave him
an opportunity to answer embarrassing questions about his (largely
wasted) youth, describe how the Nazi party should be organized,
make insightful remarks about the power of propaganda, and gener¬
ally outline his ideology along with his domestic and foreign policy
goals. The book itself has long been controversial, mostly because of
the assumption that Hitler laid out his political blueprint in it, which
was then ignored both at home and abroad.

Mein Kampf is indeed remarkably frank; its advocacy of war and
murder is probably unsurpassed among major political works for its
sheer brutality. A blueprint, however, it definitely was not. It does
reveal Hitler’s virulent anti-Semitism, but that hardly made him
unique in Germany (or in Europe) at the time, and it is silent about
the eventual fate of the German Jews beyond the need to deny them
citizenship. It says nothing about eradicating rival political parties,
destroying trade unions, or crippling churches. It does discuss the
necessity for ample living space, but, aside from Ukraine, it does not
specify where this should be obtained. Finally, in Mein Kampf Hitler
pontificates about the inevitability and indeed desirability of war, but
he does not say when or how this war will take place. The two vol¬
umes were so long - nearly 700 pages - and so diverse in subject
matter, that readers, even Nazis, tended to take from the book what
they wanted and dismiss the rest. The problem was not, as so many
have argued since, that no one, including foreign statesmen, read it; it
was whether anyone should have taken it seriously.

By the time Hitler was released from prison in February 1925, a
great deal had changed in Germany since November 1923. A new and
stable currency had replaced the inflated one, and unemployment
was declining, as was political extremism. In the same year, a conser¬
vative monarchist and war hero, Paul von Hindenburg, was elected
president by a popular vote. His administration was both a help and
hindrance to the Weimar Republic. On the one hand, conservatives

The Seizure of Power

were a little more willing to tolerate the republic if Hindenburg could
do so. On the other hand, Hindenburg was already 78 years old when
he was elected to his first seven-year term. He was, if not on the verge
of senility, at least ailing in 1932 when he was elected to a second
term, the most critical moment in all of German history.

Hitler realized in 1925 that a second coup attempt was out of the
question. He would have to come to power legally or not at all. This
was a remarkable change in tactics for someone who, in the popular
mind, was capable of acting only out of rage and impulse. In fact,
Hitler’s biggest accomplishment between his release from prison in
1925 and his rise to power in 1933 was probably his ability to restrain
his overanxious supporters. After coming to power in 1933 his pri¬
mary task was to calm down zealous ethnic Germans in neighboring
countries who were all too eager to be annexed by an insufficiently
rearmed Germany. Hitler was remarkably successful in both instances,
up to at least 1939, proving that he was perfectly capable of acting
rationally.

Nonetheless, from February 1925, when the Nazi party was
refounded, until the middle of 1929, its growth was so slow that had
that rate continued Hitler probably would have died of old age before
the party became a major force in German politics. Whereas it had
55,000 members on the eve of the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, it had
only 35,000 in 1926 and 60,000 in 1928. Partly as a result of Hitlers
being forbidden to speak publicly, party revenues were severely
limited. If success breeds success, failure breeds apathy. In the
parliamentary elections of May 1928, the Nazi party was able to
garner only 2.6 percent of the vote, less than half of what it had won
under a pseudonym four years earlier.

Hitler, nevertheless, did not let these lean years go to waste. Nazis
founded, renamed, or enlarged various subsidiary organizations,
including the Sturmabteilung (SA), or Storm Troopers, the Hitler
Youth, the School Children’s League, the Student League for univer¬
sity students, and various other organizations for lawyers, physicians,
women, peasants, and industrial workers. By appealing to so many
different demographic groups, the party was becoming not only total¬
itarian but also a state within a state. Hitler wanted to make it clear

The Seizure of Power

that there was a place for virtually everyone in the party or one of its
subsidiaries, with the major exception of Jews. To a considerable
extent he succeeded.

Unlike the German Communist party (Kommunistiche Partei
Deutschlands, or KPD), which appealed in practice only to industrial
workers, and the Fascists, whose attraction was limited almost exclu¬
sively to the middle class and the wealthy, the Nazis became a truly
mass movement, especially after 1930. Although for many years histo¬
rians described it as a lower middle-class movement, attracting arti¬
sans, clerks, small shopkeepers, elementary school teachers, and other
low-level civil servants, we now know that a higher percentage of upper
middle-class professionals eventually joined the Nazi party. Industrial
workers were underrepresented but, still, about one-quarter of them
had joined by 1932, especially those who were unemployed. The Nazi
party, in fact, was the only party in Germany, apart from the Catholic
Center party, to appeal to voters across class lines. The two things that
held most of their heterogeneous following together were their dislike
of the Weimar Republic and their attraction to Adolf Hitler.

The Great Depression and the Nazi Takeover

Nazi party membership began to explode in the middle of 1929 with
the onslaught of the Great Depression, which came earlier to Germany
than to the United States. Nearly 1.4 million Germans were unem¬
ployed by that time, more than double the figure for the previous year.
In 1930 unemployment more than doubled again, finally reaching a
peak in mid-1932 of 6.2 million, or about one-third of the nation’s
workers. Even these figures are misleading because they do not
include part-time workers and workers who were no longer receiving
unemployment benefits. Although unemployed workers did not nec¬
essarily flee to the Nazis - many joined the Communists instead -
there is no doubt that the growth of Nazi party membership closely
paralleled the rising unemployment, caused as much by the fear of
unemployment, especially within the middle class, as unemployment
itself. As party membership grew, so too did the Nazi vote. In the

The Seizure of Power

relatively prosperous year of 1928, they gained only 810,000 votes in
Reichstag elections. That number skyrocketed after the onset of the
Depression to 6.4 million, or 18.3 percent, in September 1930 and to
13.7 million, or 37.4 percent, in July 1932, when the Depression was
at its worst.

Political parties with radical and simplistic solutions tend to do
well during times of political and economic turmoil - the Communists
in Russia and the Fascists in Italy had proved this in 1917 and 1921-2
respectively - and poorly during times of prosperity and political sta¬
bility, as the Nazis had discovered in the second half of the 1920s. But
the Great Depression gave the Nazis a second chance. Hitler had said
that the recent relative prosperity was only temporary, and he had
been proved right. The German Reichstag and government were no
more able to cope with the economic crisis than the Duma in Russia
and the Chamber of Deputies in Italy had been able to deal with their
respective crises.

Hitlers campaign rhetoric was highly effective. Instead of merely
making material promises, he spoke in semireligious terms about
renewing old-fashioned German pride, honor, morality, struggle,
unity, and greatness, and of idealism and a hatred of Marxism. He
promised the German people a whole new system of government, not
just a change in government, of which there had been far too many
already. He appeared to fulfill the need for heroic leadership at a time
when the nation desperately craved it. He also enjoyed the distinct
advantage, as Lenin and Mussolini did before him, of not having held
power during times of political and economic disasters. Far from glo¬
rifying war, “National Socialism means peace” was the party slogan in
1932, when five major elections were held. Even anti-Semitism was
toned down in Hitlers speeches. During the campaigns all of these
messages were promoted in Nazi party rallies, which were more
numerous than those of all the other parties combined. Nevertheless,
as the charismatic head of a heterogeneous protest movement, Hitler
needed to come to power quickly or he likely would not come to
power at all.

Ironically, Marxists, both in Germany and in the Soviet Union,
were of great help in Hitlers acquisition of power. The German

The Seizure of Power

government had helped smuggle Lenin into Russia in 1917. Now it
was time for Stalin and German Marxists to return the favor. German
Social Democrats, who were moderate and democratic in practice,
maintained their radical Marxist rhetoric during the entire Weimar
Republic, which alienated the bourgeoisie. The Socialists, in fact,
lacked a real program both when they were in the government and
when they dropped out of the government, as they did in 1930 when
their collaboration was needed most. Although deeply committed to
the Weimar Republic, they were more concerned with appeasing their
constituents and distinguishing themselves from their hated
Communist rivals than they were in offering practical proposals for
solving the economic crisis.

If the crimes of the German Socialists were ones of omission, those
of the German Communists and their wire-puller in the Kremlin,
Joseph Stalin, were ones of commission. Among students of history,
Stalin’s aims are disputed. He may have wanted to promote a Hitlerian
Germany that would go to war against the capitalist West, after which
the Soviet Union would be able to pick up the pieces. Or he may have
hoped that a Hitler dictatorship would force the German Socialists to
combine with the KPD in a proletarian revolution. Still other histo¬
rians believe that Stalin feared a Communist Germany might replace
the Soviet Union as the leader of the international Communist
movement called the Comintern. In any event, the Soviet dictator for¬
bade any collaboration between the German Communists and what
they liked to call the “Social Fascists,” the Social Democrats. At the
same time, he ordered them to vote with the Nazis in the Reichstag on
a number of issues.

Both the Socialists and the Communists, in good orthodox Marxist
tradition, were convinced that Hitler was the tool of capitalists. In
reality, Hitler was no more an agent of capitalism in 1932-3 than
Lenin was a German agent in 1917. Both men were happy to accept
aid from any source foolish enough to offer it to them, but felt no
sense of obligation in return. Although Hitler did receive some finan¬
cial assistance from German industrialists, as numerous Marxist his¬
torians have asserted, it was minor compared to the revenues the
Nazis were able to raise through party membership dues and rallies.

The Seizure of Power

The German Communists were also useful to the Nazis as
bogeymen. The KPD benefited from the Depression almost as much
as the Nazis themselves. They had only 3.26 million votes in 1928, but
gained 4.5 million in 1930 and 5.28 million in July 1932. Most alarm¬
ing for the conservatives was the addition of 700,000 votes in
November, giving the Communists nearly 17 percent of the vote at
the very time the Nazis’ vote dropped by over 2 million, or 4.3 per¬
cent. Together with the Socialists, the two Marxist parties drew 37.4
percent of the votes compared to 33.1 percent for the Nazis. The Nazis
were now able to argue, with at least some plausibility, that the
German people had only two choices: themselves or the Marxists. At
the same time, conservative politicians, like former chancellor Franz
von Papen, assumed that the Nazis were now in trouble and therefore
more open to compromise. He imagined that if he could persuade
Hindenburg to name Hitler chancellor with himself as vice chancellor,
Hitler and his legions would be the captives of conservative interests
and would then help them establish an authoritarian but not dictato¬
rial regime.

These delusions, a virulent fear of communism within the middle
and upper classes, and a feeling among many Germans that he ought
at least to be given a chance to show what he could do, were just three
reasons behind Hitler’s appointment as chancellor by President
Hindenburg on January 30, 1933. Ironically they were all reminis¬
cent of Mussolini’s takeover of power a little over a decade earlier.
Both appointments were constitutional but morally reprehensible.
Mussolini’s appointment had been accompanied by the threat of vio¬
lence, which at least was not overt or immediate in the case of Hitler.
However, Hitler had made no secret of his desire to become a dic¬
tator and to throw out the Weimar constitution. He could rightly
claim to lead what was now by far the largest party in the Reichstag,
something Mussolini could not in 1922. However, neither man com¬
manded anything like a majority in their respective parliaments;
both were able to come to power only because of their opponents’
bitter divisions. In both cases, wealthy conservatives and nationalists
imagined they could control “their” men once they were in power.
The self-deception was particularly grotesque in Hitler’s case. The

The Seizure of Power

Nazis turned out to be just as destructive of conservative values as
they were of Marxist ideals. Little did the conservatives know that
once Hitler was allowed to get his foot in the door of power he would
soon smash the door down and totally ransack the conservatives’
household.

Hitler was no more a dictator the moment he came to power in
1933 than Mussolini was in 1922 or Lenin in 1917. Like Lenin (but
perhaps not like Mussolini), Hitler fully intended somehow to gain
total power as soon as possible. Like Mussolini, he at first headed a
cabinet in which his own party was in a minority; Nazis held just four
of 14 seats. Despite earlier promises to von Papen that there would be
no more campaigning, Hitler immediately announced that there
would be one last election five weeks later. He was confident that
incumbency and the Nazis’ control of the police would give the party
an absolute majority and enable him to override the constraints of
both the Reichstag and the president.

A week before the election a mysterious fire gutted the Reichstag
building. The Nazis immediately claimed that it was part of a
Communist conspiracy. Historians have long debated how the fire
actually started - they now know that it was the work of a “freelance”
Dutch Communist - but they have always argued that it was the fire
that enabled Hitler to persuade the 85-year-old president to grant him
emergency powers. He was thereby able to revoke all civil liberties
guaranteed in the Weimar constitution, outlaw the Communist party,
and rule by decree. As it turned out, the “emergency” lasted for 12
years, to the very end of his rule. The Nazi vote of 43.9 percent still fell
short of their goal, but together with their Nationalist allies they con¬
trolled 52 percent of the Reichstag deputies. The Reichstag, minus its
Communist deputies, but with the approval of the Catholic Center
party, now passed the Enabling Law, which gave the Nazis four years
to rule without its interference.

During the next six months the Nazis carried out their
Gleichschaltung. They eliminated all other political parties, censored
the mass media, and imprisoned political opponents. They outlawed
independent trade unions. They also robbed the 35 German states of
their autonomy, purged the civil service (particularly at the upper

The Seizure of Power

levels) of Jews and anti-Nazis, and destroyed the independence of the
judiciary. In five months Hitler accomplished as much as Mussolini
did in five years.

Still beyond Hitler’s control was the army, to some extent the
churches, the 4-million-man SA, and the president of the republic.
The Gleichschaltung of the army and churches had to wait, but the SA
and the president were taken care of in 1934. The leaders and rank
and file of the SA felt that their sacrifices during the Kampfzeit
(fighting time) prior to Hitler’s takeover had not been fully appreci¬
ated or duly rewarded. Hitler had needed the SA to intimidate his
opponents and the Jews. But once his power was secure the SA was an
embarrassment and a threat to his goal of restoring stability. When its
leadership made vague threats about a“second revolution,”he decided
to act. On the night of June 30,1934 he had 50 of its leaders executed
(along with at least 35 other Nazi enemies) on the pretext that mem¬
bers of the SA, including its leader, Ernst Rohm, had been plotting a
putsch and practicing homosexuality. Although it was not restricted
purely to the top leadership of the SA - Nazis used the opportunity to
even old scores with former anti-Nazis - the best guess is that about
85 people were killed in a single night (not the 1,100 estimated by
some foreigners at the time). Most Germans were more relieved than
outraged because SA members had been regarded as hoodlums.
President Hindenburg proved to be even less of a problem: he oblig¬
ingly died on August 2, 1934. Hitler then merged the offices of
president and chancellor, though he never used the former title. He
also automatically replaced Hindenburg as the commander-in-chief
of the army, and the day after the president’s death asked all German
soldiers to swear an oath of allegiance to him. Unlike Mussolini,
Hitler was now alone at the top, being both the head of government
and the head of state.

It is obvious that there were strong similarities in how the three total¬
itarian parties seized and consolidated power. Rather than following
a script to power, they all took advantage of domestic crises and the
divisions of their enemies. They all consolidated their power in stages.
There was one big difference, however. Both the Fascists and the

The Seizure of Power

Nazis came to power legally, at least superficially. However much they
might be disliked by many elements of their respective country’s
population, few people doubted the legitimacy of the fascist govern¬
ments. This simple fact made it easier for them to remain in power.
The Communists, however, never completely overcame the stigma of
illegitimacy.

Personalities and Policies of the
Dictators

All of them had an unquenchable belief in themselves.

The impact the totalitarian dictators had on the world is all the more
remarkable considering their humble beginnings. Only Lenin came
from a cultivated family, and he was also the only one who had earned
an advanced degree. In earlier and more stable times it is highly
unlikely that the dictators would have gained anything like the prom¬
inence they eventually achieved. Ironically, they were all beneficiaries
of the democratic atmosphere of post-World War I Europe: monarchs
and diplomats were in disgrace and the recently enfranchised masses
were eager to accept the leadership of one of their own. Stalin,
Mussolini, and Hitler all recognized this mood and made a virtue of
necessity by boasting of their humble origins.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

Stalin’s Youth and Early Career

In the department of modest beginnings, Joseph Stalin outdid his
counterparts. Born and raised in poverty, he died the most powerful
and feared man in the world. Stalins nationality was also the most
ambiguous of the dictators. He was born in the town of Gori in the
Caucasian state of Georgia and did not start learning Russian until he
was eight or nine. He never lost his Georgian accent and occasionally
mumbled Russian case endings because he was unsure of their accu¬
racy. Nevertheless, he was anything but pro-Georgian, often treating
his native land with brutality and contempt. At the same time, Stalin
never felt himself fully Russian either. His class background was
equally ambiguous. He was neither a worker nor an intellectual.

Little is known about Stalins childhood, in large part because as
dictator he destroyed all the papers that could have shed light on his
early life, along with the people who had known him in his early years
as a revolutionary. His official biography contains only a few lines
about his youth. Informants often gave contradictory accounts of the
man. Much of what we have been told has come from individuals who
were trying to remember events that had occurred 40 to 60 years ear¬
lier; they also had reasons, conscious or unconscious, to distort their
stories. According to recently discovered documents, Stalin was born
in 1878, not 1879 as previously believed. His parents were desperately
poor ex-serfs who were at best semiliterate. His birthplace was a one-
room hut with wooden walls and a brick floor that smelled of foul
water and unwashed bodies. His father was a self-employed shoe¬
maker who drank heavily and regularly thrashed the young Stalin
until his eyes were black and his body was covered with bruises. Such
beatings were not unusual at that time and place, and did not mean
that a child would inevitably grow up to be a monster. But it is entirely
possible that Stalin’s treatment as a child may have destroyed good
relations both with his father and with all other human beings. It may
also have been the beatings that made it difficult for him to establish
meaningful relationships and left him devoid of compassion.

His mother had a more positive influence on the young Joseph’s life
than his father. She had married at 15 and lost her first two children

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

at birth; not surprisingly she became overindulgent with her first
surviving child. She was a quiet, pious woman whose only pleasure
was attending the local Russian Orthodox church. Her fondest ambi¬
tion was for her son to become first a choirboy, which he did, and
then a priest. She defended him against his father and encouraged
him to attend a seminary, but Stalin showed little appreciation in
return. As an adult he rarely visited her although he did write to her
regularly. He failed to attend her funeral in 1936, but this may have
been due to his fear of assassins in his native Georgia where he was
especially hated.

The seminary helped Stalin develop a phenomenal memory, an
asset he shared with the other totalitarian dictators, and also with
Napoleon. Moreover, the seminary helped make him dogmatic, which
later made Marxist absolutism all the easier for him to accept. He was
also indebted to the institution for the repetitive, declamatory, and
liturgical style of speaking he used effectively in his public speeches.
Stalin did very well in his first year at the seminary, gaining high
marks for both his conduct and his work. He also read widely outside
the prescribed curriculum. During his second year, however, he
became angry when other students tried to lead a discussion, and he
bitterly resented the petty espionage used by the seminary’s author¬
ities to uncover breaches of rules and the reading of forbidden litera¬
ture. His involvement in revolutionary activity finally led to his
expulsion in 1896, with no qualifications for a conventional career.

By this time, Stalin had reached his full height of only five feet four
inches. Moreover, his face was pitted with smallpox scars from the age
of five, and he had a partially crippled arm and deformed toes on his
left foot. After he became the dictator of Russia he wore elevator
shoes, and at parades he usually stood on a slightly raised platform.
Almost certainly his short stature, scarred face, and lower-class social
origins gave him an inferiority complex, which made him touchy,
vindictive, and suspicious throughout his life. His poor physical
appearance also made him avoid being shown close-up in films and
newsreels (see Plate 5), in sharp contrast to Hitler and Mussolini.

We have no knowledge of what Stalin did between his expulsion
from the seminary and 1899. We know only that in December 1899

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

he had his first and only regular job recording temperatures in a
weather observatory. By this time, he had joined the Russian Social
Democratic party. As noted in Chapter 2, during and after the
Revolution of 1905, he led bandit squads that robbed banks to finance
the Bolsheviks. In 1912 he was also briefly an editor of the party news¬
paper Pravda. He spent most of the prerevolutionary years in prison
or in exile in Vienna. In all he was arrested seven times, sent to Siberia
six times (beginning in 1903), and escaped five times. Between 1908
and 1917 he was a free man for only a year and a half. However, prison
and Siberian exile in tsarist Russia were a far cry from what they were
to become under Stalin himself. For Stalin and other revolutionaries
of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, prison and exile
provided an opportunity for an advanced education in radical litera¬
ture and a chance for discussions with fellow revolutionaries, who
were often experienced teachers.

Stalin took no part in World War I, nor was he one of the leaders of
the Bolshevik Revolution. He was no doubt relieved when tsarist offi¬
cials rejected him for military service in December 1916 because of
his weak left arm. Official Soviet accounts claimed he had been
rejected because he was considered “too dangerous.” His minor role
in the events of 1917, especially compared to Lenin’s and Trotsky’s,
later became an embarrassment. After his rise to power Stalin took
care of that little problem simply by altering records, suppressing
memoirs, and forcing editors, historians, artists, and film makers to
create an imaginary account of the Revolution. Trotsky’s role was
expunged, and Stalin became the equal of Lenin, the man who had
presumably never left Russia and was there to greet Lenin upon his
return from exile.

The future dictator’s role as a husband and father was no more
impressive than his role in the Bolshevik Revolution. Information
about his first wife, Ekaterina “Keke” Svanidze, is as sketchy as most
other aspects of Stalin’s early life. According to some accounts they
married in 1902 and she died in 1908; other sources place their
marriage in 1905 and her death in 1907. All accounts seem to agree
that she was no revolutionary and was, in fact, a devout Christian and
believer in traditional Georgian values: that a woman’s place was in

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

the home and that she should dress modestly and submit to her
husband’s authority in all things. Fortunately for her these values
coincided with her husband’s philosophy of male dominance. Stalin
treated all women - wives, daughter, and mother - much as his father
had treated him. He was a foul-mouthed bully, disrespectful and
capable of committing physical abuse. Ekaterina died shortly after
giving birth to a son, Yakov. Stalin’s grief at her passing, however, was
genuine.

Stalin married his second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, in 1919. Also
a Georgian, she had been his secretary and was only 16, and 22 years
his junior, when they married. Apparently he married her for
companionship. As a semi-intellectual, he hated anyone who was a
genuine intellectual. Nadezhda bore him two children, Vasily, in 1921,
and Svetlana, in 1926. They had a modest but comfortable life, with a
two-room town apartment in the Kremlin, the old government
quarter in the center of Moscow, and a fine home in the country,
which Stalin, with his interest in architecture, changed from a gloomy
rural house into an airy villa. Stalin was affectionate with Svetlana,
except when she wore short skirts and tight sweaters. In general, how¬
ever, his marriage was not happy. Nadezhda did not hesitate to give
her husband tongue lashings when he richly deserved them, and he
retaliated by embarrassing her in public. It was apparently after one
such episode in 1932 that she went home and shot herself. Stalin kept
the details of her death a state secret and thereafter did not allow
other top Communist party members to bring their wives to his social
functions. After his second wife’s death he had no more female com¬
panions who might have softened his harshness.

Stalin the Demigod

Stalin was vain, sometimes irrational, and prone to believing wild
rumors and speculation. He was also easily offended and could be
rude to his colleagues, not to mention brutal and vengeful. What is
remarkable, however, especially in light of the millions of murders for
which he was responsible, is that he could and often did give the

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

impression of being benign toward his colleagues and the general
public. In meetings, at least early in his career, he had the good sense
not to say anything before everyone else had had their say, even
encouraging them to explain their positions. Then he would state the
conclusion toward which the discussion had been moving. His brevity,
as well as his attention to detail, gave the impression of wisdom and
self-confidence. Like Hitler, once Stalin was firmly ensconced in power
he allowed his underlings to bicker so that he alone could arbitrate (see
Plate 6). He could be amazingly patient and an ideal listener, especially
with some low-level provincial official, and in the process he often
gained another client. When he wished, Stalin could also exude a
simple folksy charm, which some of his interviewers found completely
disarming. In the early 1930s he began giving interviews to highly
selected journalists and people of distinction. On these occasions he
appeared like a modest disciple of Lenin. The German journalist Emil
Ludwig was so taken in that he said he would willingly turn over the
education of his children to the Soviet leader. The American ambas¬
sador to the Soviet Union from 1936 to 1938, Joseph E. Davies,
observed that Stalin appeared to have “a strong mind which is com¬
posed and wise. His brown eye is exceedingly kindly and gentle. A
child would like to sit in his lap and a dog would sidle up to him.” 1
However, Stalin could be extraordinarily rude and coarse in debates,
and would break up meetings with crude heckling.

Like many dictators, Stalin was utterly conceited about his general
knowledge. Markings in his personal library indicate that he did some
reading on Russian history, past rulers’ techniques of absolute rule (he
was especially attracted to Peter the Great and Ivan the Terrible), and the
history of warfare. But he went far beyond these readings to imagine that
he could judge things better than professionals in all sorts of fields
including military science, linguistics, economics, physics, and biology.
His ultimate intellectual claim, of course, was to be an interpreter of
Marxism and Leninism. Every one of Stalin’s theoretical words had to be
treated as sacred dogma even though in most areas his knowledge was at
best that of an amateur, if not of an outright ignoramus.

Quoted in T. H. Rigby, ed., Stalin (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1966), 78.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

The idea that Stalin was all-wise was part of what historians have
called the cult of personality. It can be traced back to Stalin’s eulogy
to Lenin at the latter’s funeral in 1924, which, much like the lit¬
urgies he had heard in the seminary, was filled with ecclesiastical
rhetoric. Stalin helped make the anniversary of Lenin’s death a
national day of mourning. Petrograd was renamed Leningrad,
Lenin’s works were published in many languages, and his every
word acquired the status of holy writ. (This task was made much
easier by Stalin’s absolute control over access to Lenin’s manu¬
scripts.) Finally, Lenin’s body was mummified and placed in a huge
mausoleum in Moscow. This cult of personality, which Lenin him¬
self found repugnant, was thus begun by Stalin, who also claimed
his status as Lenin’s most trusted and faithful disciple, and his
chosen successor who alone was capable of interpreting the mas¬
ter’s often contradictory writings. By bestowing on Lenin the
stature of a superhuman, Stalin was laying the foundations for
“Leninism” and, more important, for his demigod status as well
(see Plate 7). His own status as a cult figure dates at least in part
from the celebration of his (alleged) fiftieth birthday in 1929 when
the Soviet press printed hundreds of letters written “spontane¬
ously” in praise of him by people from all walks of life.

Like God, Stalin was not only all-knowing, but also all-good, all-
just, and all-powerful. The national anthem mentioned him by name -
something that even Hitler and Mussolini dared not demand. Stalin
himself raised his cult to a new height by publishing a book entitled
History of the All-Union Communist Party: Short Course in 1938.
Better known simply by its subtitle, it became the bible of High
Stalinism. It was absolutely breathtaking in its distortion of history:
all of his opponents were shown as agents of imperialism, while Stalin
was credited with organizing the revolution, establishing a productive
and prosperous agriculture, smashing treason, and leading the world’s
proletariat. To make sure that the masses got the point, he also care¬
fully monitored fictionalized films. Paintings depicted Stalin leading
strikes before the revolution and advising a complaisant Lenin.
Almost every office and private home was adorned with an idealized
portrait of the great leader.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

The degree to which the general public accepted the Stalin cult is
difficult to determine, as indeed are all aspects of public opinion in
a totalitarian dictatorship. There is some evidence that the exalted
image of Stalin was widely accepted by millions of Soviet people
from all backgrounds and occupations, whose livelihoods were
governed by the enormous state apparatus and who owed their jobs
directly to the dictator. In any event, Stalin’s deification made it
impossible for the Communist party to control him and it justified
in advance everything he did.

Not surprisingly, this great man, with unlimited power, could set his
own work schedule and entertain himself as he pleased. His working
day was eccentric and unhealthy, to say the least. On the one hand, he
refused to delegate responsibility and micromanaged his subordinates
while sometimes working 16 hours a day. On the other hand, he fre¬
quently arose around noon, went to his office and worked for six or
seven hours, and then had dinner with his cronies around ten o’clock (a
schedule which the entire ruling elite was forced to follow, even
Communist leaders in foreign countries, because Stalin might call them
at any hour of the night). The evening meal would be the occasion for
rambling stories told repeatedly by Stalin, and for his practical jokes -
played on others, of course. Stalin would puff contentedly on his pipe or
on cigarettes while watching his guests sit on tomatoes or cakes. He
especially enjoyed watching his guests get drunk, hoping to loosen their
tongues; no one dared refuse a drink that had been offered to him by
Stalin. Dinner would then be followed by one to three movies, those
featuring Charlie Chaplin, cowboys, or Tarzan being among his favor¬
ites. He also liked grand opera, never missing a performance of Boris
Godunov; Aida was another favorite. Finally, like many Russians, Stalin
enjoyed playing chess. His opponents were wise to try not to win.

Mussolini: The Young Socialist

Benito Mussolini’s childhood was in some ways similar to Stalin’s,
although one should not push the analogy too far. He was born in the
village of Predappio in the Romagna - a region with a history of class

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

violence and radicalism - in east central Italy in 1883, five years later
than the Soviet dictator. Mussolini’s family was of modest means, but
his later claims notwithstanding, it was by no means poverty-stricken.
There were plenty of books in the house and even some domestic help.
Both Stalin’s and Mussolini’s fathers were artisans. Mussolini’s father,
Alessandro, was a blacksmith who was active in the local Socialist party
and as such was an atheist. He drank heavily and was prone to woman¬
izing. Mussolini later admitted that he had been strongly influenced by
his father. His mother, Rosa, like Stalin’s, was religious. However, she
differed from Stalin’s mother in being well educated, which enabled her
to teach elementary school. The adult Mussolini and the Fascist party
tried to reconcile these two disparate influences in his upbringing.

As a child Benito was stubborn, sullen, and incapable of real affec¬
tion even toward his parents, sister, and younger brother. He taught
himself to read but did not talk much, preferring to fight instead. He
was a gang leader in his boarding school and loved to lead other chil¬
dren in acts of vandalism. In 1893, in his second year, the 10-year-old
Benito led a revolt to protest the quality of the institution’s food. Once
he was even expelled for stabbing another boy.

Thanks no doubt to his mother, the only person he ever genuinely
loved (like Hitler), the young Benito remained in school until he
earned his diploma at the age of 18, thereby surpassing both Stalin
and Hitler. However, like the other two dictators, he was sensitive
about his lack of advanced education and disliked intellectuals. In
school he learned what he wanted to rather than the prescribed cur¬
riculum. He had a preference for the history of ancient Rome, which
continued to fascinate him as an adult. He developed an almost reli¬
gious veneration for Julius Caesar in particular.

By the time Mussolini’s formal education was complete he had
reached his full height of five feet six inches. He has often been
described as short, but actually his height would have been close to
average for his time and place. Nevertheless, like Stalin, he seems to
have been self-conscious about his size because photographs of him
were almost always taken at a high tilt, looking upward. He loved to
be seen next to King Victor Emmanuel III, who was even shorter (see
Plate 8). He also preferred ministers who were shorter than himself.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

To compensate for his size he stood ramrod straight, pushed out his
lower lip and jaw, and tilted his head backwards so that he seemed to
be looking down. What Mussolini lacked in stature he made up for
with his barrel chest, which he inherited from his father. To show it off
he was frequently photographed stripped to the waist, helping peas¬
ants bring in the harvest or posing among bathers. Hitler, who lacked
Mussolini’s physique, thought such pictures unbecoming of a head of
government.

Like the other dictators, including Lenin, Mussolini rarely had a
regular job outside politics. He disliked hard work and lacked the will
to hold down a nonpolitical job. After he completed his education he
taught as a substitute teacher in an elementary school for a year, a
common means of raising oneself socially in those days. However, he
probably never intended to make teaching a career and, in any case,
was unable to renew his teaching contract.

Between 1902 and 1904, Mussolini went to Switzerland, perhaps
to escape conscription into the Italian army, perhaps to run away
from his parents, or possibly to escape debts. He became a common
laborer for a short time and even begged. He slept in a crate and was
arrested for vagrancy. He worked for as little as $4 a week and felt
exploited. This experience, along with his father’s politics, led the
young Mussolini to socialism. In 1904 he associated with a number
of exiled Italian and Russian revolutionary socialists. While still in
Switzerland he began making public speeches to Italian Socialists, in
which he attacked religion and militarism, which eventually led to
his arrest and deportation. While in multilingual Switzerland he
learned French and some German, which were to prove useful to
him in his career.

At the end of 1904, Mussolini took advantage of a decree that
amnestied draft evaders and returned to Italy to serve in the army,
after which he returned briefly to elementary school teaching. In 1909
he moved to Trent in the Italian-speaking portion of the Tyrol, at that
time still part of the Austrian empire. He entered Socialist politics and
became the editor of an Italian-language newspaper. His experience
in multinational Austria may have aroused his Italian nationalism,
but he was eventually expelled because of his violent anticlericalism.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

In 1912, after a stormy tenure in socialist journalism, and having
served a prison term for inciting insurrection, Mussolini achieved
prominence in national politics when he became the editor of the
Socialist party’s official newspaper, Avanti. He was highly successful
in this new role, raising the paper’s circulation in just two years from
28,000 to 94,000 with his slashing, vitriolic articles. His creed of revo¬
lutionary violence, antipatriotism, anticlericalism, and antimilitarism
put him squarely in the party’s left wing. A year earlier, in 1911, he
had denounced the Libyan War as a “mad adventure,” for which he
was jailed for five months.

The outbreak of World War I proved to be a major turning point
in Mussolini’s life and political philosophy. For several weeks he was
not sure what his attitude toward the war should be and adhered to
the orthodox Socialist policy of neutrality, but by October he was
asking the party’s executive to change its policy. He thought that
great historic events were taking place and that Italy’s neutrality was
shameful, an attitude he was to retain for the next quarter century.
However, his efforts to influence the party were a total failure. He
remained almost alone in his convictions and resigned from Avanti.
He was later expelled from the party altogether. In December 1914
he founded a newspaper, Popolo d’ltalia, in which he agitated for
intervention on the Entente side, against Austria, and violently
attacked neutralists. Rumor had it - and this has now been con¬
firmed by uncovered documents - that he was being subsidized in
this effort by the French government and some Italian
industrialists.

From September 1915 to January 1917, Mussolini served as a
draftee in the Italian army, but he was on the front for only one-
third of that time. He gradually came to like life in the trenches,
which gave him a sense of physical well-being. He was a conscientious
but not outstanding soldier. Like Hitler, he rose to the rank of
corporal and eventually sergeant but, unlike Hitler, he received no
prestigious decorations for bravery. The only serious wounds he
suffered (in the buttocks) were unrelated to combat. He did resemble
Hitler, however, in believing that winning was a matter of
willpower.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

Mussolini’s views of marriage began evolving about the same time
as his political opinions underwent a radical change. In 1910 Rachele
Guidi, the daughter of his father’s mistress, became his common-law
wife. In 1916, shortly after leaving the Socialist party, many of whose
members regarded marriage as a strictly bourgeois institution, he for¬
mally married Rachele in a civil ceremony. By 1925, when Mussolini
was courting the respectable middle class and the Roman Catholic
Church, he renounced his former anticlericalism and had a church
wedding. Rachele was an unpretentious country woman who stayed
out of politics by continuing to live in Milan for several years while
her husband was in Rome. Between 1910 and 1929, she bore him
three boys and two girls; he had a sentimental attachment to his chil¬
dren but spent little time with them. They, in turn, had a hard time
living up to his high expectations.

Mussolini found his living arrangements, with himself in Rome
and his family in Milan, congenial because he was hen-pecked by his
wife. It also made it much easier for him to bring a succession of
hundreds of mistresses into his office at the Palazzo Venezia (Plate 9).
Innumerable women would visit him, either at his initiative or under
some pretext. They arrived at a private back entrance of the palace
and usually spent as little as 15 minutes with him, but never the
whole night. Ordinary Italians did not seem to mind this because his
mistresses and two illegitimate children humanized Mussolini and
added to the image of his virility. If his infidelities did not damage
him politically, however, they did so physically, for he contracted
syphilis as early as 1907 and, apparently, suffered from it for much of
his life.

Besides his mother, mistresses, and perhaps his younger brother,
Arnaldo, Mussolini was also fond of music. Palestrina, Vivaldi, Verdi,
and Wagner were his favorite composers, and triumphal marches,
great symphonies, and, later in his life, grand opera were his favorite
forms of music. In his early days he also appreciated cartoons and sat¬
ires, but later he regarded fascism as too sacred to be ridiculed.
Somewhat surprisingly, perhaps, expensive material possessions did
not appeal to him. Like the other totalitarian dictators, he was far
more interested in power than in wealth.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

The Duce: Strengths and Weaknesses

Although Mussolini could be both brutal and domineering, he did
have a number of characteristics that not only enabled him to come to
power but also to become, for a time, the most popular ruler in Italian
history. Like his counterparts, Stalin and Hitler, he could turn on the
charm whenever he wished. His vitality, quick wit, courtesy, and intel¬
ligence impressed even his critics. His presence could be exciting,
disturbing, and commanding, so that many people voluntarily felt
compelled to obey him. A dramatic actor in public, he loved to court
publicity by engaging in risky sports and activities such as flying,
motorcycling, horseback riding, or playing with (toothless) lion cubs.
As a former journalist, he knew how to impress and flatter his many
interviewers, especially foreigners. Whereas Hitler delivered mono¬
logues to his visitors, Mussolini would question them and always
learned something new. Americans regarded him as self-made and a
man of action. Even the future British prime minister Winston
Churchill, who met the Duce, admitted that if he had lived in Italy in
the 1920s he would have been a Fascist.

Mussolini’s skills as a propagandist have never been doubted. He
succeeded so well in convincing others of his point of view that he
also fooled himself. In public speaking his voice was both pow¬
erful and flexible; his tone could be solemn, prophetic, imperative, or
exalting. In addition, he was a talented actor, could appear wholly
dedicated to a cause, and was adept at perceiving the mood of a crowd.

Unfortunately, Mussolini’s negative characteristics far outweighed
his positive ones, although they were by no means immediately
apparent. He was, first of all, a terrible administrator. Although he had
an excellent memory for facts and was hardworking, he lacked the
patience for making careful decisions or pursuing a long-term strategy;
instead, he had an inexhaustible capacity to retain trivial details. His
impulsiveness was uncontrollable, and he was constantly changing his
mind. He surrounded himself with job seekers but had a talent for
giving jobs to the wrong people. He deeply distrusted his own subor¬
dinates and removed most of his ministers without warning.
Frequently, these changes meant that unqualified nonentities replaced

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

capable ministers. He probably had an inferiority complex, which
made him feel threatened by men who were either too competent or
too zealous. He refused to delegate responsibility and micromanaged
his subordinates, sometimes working 16 hours a day. Like Stalin and
Hitler, Mussolini did not want to hear bad news and was therefore fre¬
quently poorly informed about domestic and foreign affairs. Fervently
believing in his own righteousness, he hated to have his authority
questioned and rarely listened to advice, but when he did it tended to
be the advice of the last person with whom he had spoken. Like all dic¬
tators, he was vain and loved flattery. And like the others he had no
intimate friends.

None of the above negative characteristics would necessarily have
been disastrous if Mussolini had been a mere figurehead, or if he had
been good at delegating authority. He was neither. He jealously gath¬
ered more and more authority into his own hands because he didn’t
trust other peoples loyalty or competence. As early as 1926, he per¬
sonally held the offices of prime minister, president of the Fascist
Council, foreign minister, minister of the interior, minister for corpo¬
rations, minister for all three armed services, and commander-in-
chief of the Fascist Militia. At other times he was also minister for
colonies and minister for public works. Obviously he could not keep
up with all of these jobs, so he dispersed power to undersecretaries
who did not dare act on their own, even on small matters.

From all of the above, it is obvious that a cult of personality existed
for Mussolini, especially when he was at the height of his popularity
in the early 1930s. The cult was nearly as powerful as Stalin’s and sur¬
passed that of Hitler. Even before his appointment as prime minister
he was known as IL DUCE - always spelled in block capitals - or “the
leader” of Fascism. He had come from the people, but thought him¬
self infinitely superior to them. Like Hitler, he was downright con¬
temptuous of the “mob,” whom he compared to women who liked
strong men. Propaganda portrayed him as a savior to a population
that had lost sight of its aims, that lacked faith in itself, and that was
suffering from a mass inferiority complex. He saw to it that he was
given credit for every public benefit attributable to the regime: mak¬
ing the trains run on time, ridding farming regions of snakes, and

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

raising Italy’s international prestige. Corrupt or incompetent party
officials might at times deceive Mussolini, but he would eventually
root out these betrayers of his vision. Just as the pope was regarded as
the infallible leader of Roman Catholicism, Mussolini, as the slogan
said, “was always right.” Even people who did not consider themselves
Fascists subscribed to “Mussolinismo.” According to the myth, the
Italian people would become more heroic, disciplined, prepared to
make sacrifices for the common good, more serious, and more
hardworking.

The Young Hitler

Adolf Hitler has been the subject of more books and articles than any
other political figure in history, yet much about his life, especially his
youth, remains a mystery because of the scarcity of reliable sources. As
a child he had few good friends, and as an adult he committed as little
to paper as possible. Although his book Mein Kampf is partly autobio¬
graphical, it leaves much out, and what is included is often deliberately
misleading. Hitler attempted to portray what had been mostly an idle
and self-indulgent youth as a time when he overcame poverty, suffering,
and loneliness to build the “granite foundations” of his Nazi ideology.

Hitler, like Stalin, was something of an outsider, not being a native,
in the full sense, of the country he came to rule. Born in Austria in
1889, he did not become a citizen of Germany until 1931. Also like
Stalin, he was not proud of his heritage and as chancellor he humili¬
ated his homeland. His birthplace of Braunau am Inn was in a rather
poor and remote corner of the empire on the German border. His
ancestors had been peasants but not serfs. His father, Alois, was the
first in his family to rise up the social ladder. Unlike Stalin’s and
Mussolini’s fathers, Alois had a position at the top of the Imperial and
Royal Customs Service which made him very much part of the
respectable middle class. Much has been made, especially during
Hitler’s lifetime, of Alois being the illegitimate son of a poor peasant
girl named Schicklgruber. But in 1876, when Alois was 40 years old,
he unofficially changed his surname to Hitler. So Hitler was Adolf’s

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

legal surname from birth, which was fortunate for him, because it is
difficult to imagine frenzied crowds shouting “Heil Schicklgruber.” It
has also been alleged that Alois’s father may have been a Jew. The alle¬
gation is almost certainly false, but Hitler himself may have had
doubts about his “racial” makeup that he tried to atoned for by perse¬
cuting Jews. Interestingly enough, the Nazi racial laws of 1935 would
have excluded Hitler from the elite SS, since he could not have proved
that all four of his grandparents were Aryan.

Hitler’s mother, Klara, was his father’s third wife and second cousin,
and was 23 years his junior. Three babies died in infancy before
Adolf’s birth (compared to two for Stalin), a fact that probably caused
his mother to be just as over protective of her son as Stalin’s mother
had been. The family moved a great deal when Adolf was a boy until
his father retired in the provincial capital of Linz in 1895. The domi¬
neering father was around the household much of the time until he
died in 1903. Then, at 13, and for the next four years, Hitler’s only
parent was his doting mother who catered to his every whim. He grew
up spoiled, immature, and with a strong aversion to systematic work -
perhaps as a reaction to his father’s extreme punctuality.

Although Hitler did moderately well in elementary school, where
there was little competition, his grades began to fall when he entered
secondary school, mainly because he lacked discipline. He claimed
that he had led his class in geography and history, but even there his
grades were just “adequate” and “satisfactory.” Only in drawing and
gymnastics were his marks above average. One teacher called him
uncontrolled, dogmatic, hot-tempered, lacking in perseverance, and
despotic. However, he did become a choirboy, like Stalin, and was
deeply impressed by the splendor and solemnity of the Roman
Catholic services. At one time he even wanted to be an abbot.

During his teenage years Hitler had only one good friend, a fellow
Linzer named August Kubizek. The boys shared an enthusiasm for
the music of Richard Wagner, but otherwise it was an unequal rela¬
tionship. Hitler did nearly all the talking while Kubizek was a passive
listener. Hitler did not want Kubizek to have other friends, a despotic
attitude that Kubizek tolerated because he found his serious friend so
fascinating.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

After dropping out of school at the age of 16, Hitler went off to
Vienna in 1907 to enter the Academy of Fine Arts. His dreams were
shattered, however, when his application was rejected. For the next six
years he lived a mostly comfortable but lazy life thanks to an orphans
pension and an inheritance from an aunt. He filled his days with
sleeping late, studying the architecture of the Habsburg capital by day,
and attending the opera in the evening. Like Stalin and Mussolini, he
hated regular work, especially manual labor. At most he would con¬
sent to paint picture postcards of Viennese landmarks for tourists.
The poverty of his youth was a product of pure laziness and lack of
discipline, and not the unfortunate result of an economic crisis.

By his own admission in Mein Kampf, Viennese politics made a
strong impression on the young Hitler. The Austrian capital, with
more than 200,000 Jews - some well assimilated, others very conserva¬
tive and traditional - was one of the most anti-Jewish cities in the
world. Its coffee shops, which Hitler loved to frequent, were filled with
anti-Semitic newspapers. Between 1897 and 1911, the city’s mayor,
Karl Lueger, was the first politician in the world to be elected on the
basis of a specifically anti-Semitic program. But Lueger, as Hitler
pointed out in Mein Kampf, was only a cultural and religious anti-
Semite, not a racial one, a character “flaw” not suffered by another of
Hitler’s early heroes, Georg von Schonerer. The latter, however, made
the critical error, in Hitler’s view, of attacking the Roman Catholic
Church, thus alienating millions of potential followers. Hitler also
mentioned the Austrian Social Democrats in Mein Kampf. He could
not abide their Marxist internationalism and Jewish leadership, but
admired their elaborate organizational structure and mass propa¬
ganda. He was also impressed in a negative way by the Austrian
Parliament, whose sessions he occasionally attended. This was a time
when the 10 or so Austrian nationalities were represented proportion¬
ally, and the leaders of each nationalistic party tried to outdo the others
in their chauvinism and demagoguery. The consequence was that not
much was accomplished in Parliament and the emperor-king, Franz
Joseph, often had to rule by decree. For Hitler, the undignified shouting
matches, bargaining, and compromises that he witnessed were the
very essence of democracy and parliamentarianism.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

The only mentors Hitler was willing to acknowledge in Mein Kampf
were dead men whose political philosophies contained grave errors.
He said not a word about Austria’s German (meaning ethnic German)
Workers’ party, or DAP, which was founded in 1903 and became the
forerunner of the Austrian Nazi party. The organization combined
Lueger’s cultural anti-Semitism with Schonerer’s racial anti-Semitism
and, like the post-World War I German Nazis, tried to appeal to both
nationalists and workers. In the summer of 1918, the party empha¬
sized that point by changing its name to the German National Socialist
Workers’ party. Almost certainly Hitler did not want to give the
Austrian Nazis credit for ideas that he later appropriated.

Hitler claimed in Mein Kampf that by the time he left Vienna in
May 1912 (actually it was 1913) “the granite foundations” of his
political philosophy had already been laid, including his anti-Semitism.
This contention is doubtful. Hitler may have already developed a
distaste for parliamentarianism, and it is likely that he had acquired
the vocabulary of anti-Semitism from Lueger and Schonerer as well as
from numerous anti-Semitic newspapers. At the same time, he voiced
no anti-Semitic opinions while in the Austrian capital and retained a
good professional relationship with Jewish art dealers. He also enjoyed
the music of Felix Mendelssohn and Gustav Mahler, two composers
with Jewish ancestors.

Hitler left Vienna for Munich to evade service in the Austro-Hungarian
army, an institution he hated because of its multinational character. After
the Austrian criminal police tracked him down in Munich, a physical
examination declared him unfit for service. He was now 24 years old and
still without regular employment, a home of his own, or a family. He had
almost certainly picked up many of the political ideas that would later
compose his National Socialist ideology. However, unlike other great his¬
torical figures like Alexander the Great or Napoleon, there was no evi¬
dence that he was destined for political prominence.

During his first year in Munich, Hitler continued to live the life of a
vagabond artist. Then everything changed. On August 1, 1914
Germany declared war on Russia and France and World War I was
underway. He later wrote that on that day he “fell down on [his] knees
and thanked Heaven from an overflowing heart for granting [him] the

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.” 2 Two days later,
Hitler volunteered for the army. He later claimed the war was the hap¬
piest time in his life. It was a thrilling, liberating experience. Now at last,
he had a regular job, a purpose in life, and comrades. He was the only
one of the totalitarian dictators to serve in the armed forces with some
distinction, winning the Iron Cross First and Second Class, which were
rarely awarded to enlisted men (although his job as a regimental runner,
well behind the lines, was not as dangerous as has often been assumed
by historians). He never abandoned a wounded comrade or pretended
to be sick in order to avoid a perilous mission. He even refused to take
a leave. When the war ended, Hitler was in eastern Germany recovering
from a British gas attack. He claimed in Mein Kampf that the German
army had not been defeated but had been undermined by Jews and
Socialists on the home front. For him this myth was a satisfying expla¬
nation, at least politically, for why his world had suddenly come crash¬
ing down. (Interestingly enough he rejected the stabbed-in-the-back
theory in a private dinner conversation during World War II.)

Several things deeply impressed Hitler about the war. One was the
mere fact that he had survived; he was among the 25 percent in his
regiment to do so. Over time he became more and more convinced
that he led a charmed life. He expressed his admiration for the ferocity
and one-sidedness of Entente propaganda in Mein Kampf (see
Plate 18). He also believed that the British naval blockade demon¬
strated Germany’s lack of self-sufficiency. At the same time, however,
Germany’s conquest of Russia’s western territories provided him with
a model of how this deficiency could be overcome.

Hitler: The Chaotic Dictator

No one who knew Hitler in Vienna, Munich, or the trenches of France
could have guessed that he was a monster in the making. Although his
childhood had been disrupted by several moves, the early death of his
father, and career disappointments, there was nothing extraordinary

2 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston, 1943), 61.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

about his youth that marked him as a likely candidate to become a
totalitarian dictator. On the contrary, just to become chancellor of
Germany he had to overcome daunting handicaps: his foreign birth,
his lack of a university education, and his comparative youth. At 43 he
became, like Mussolini in Italy, the youngest government head in
German history.

If Hitler’s youth did not point directly to a spectacular career as a
politician, he did retain many of his youthful traits after he became
chancellor, at least until the middle of World War II. He still hated
routine work and did as little of it as possible, often preferring to
spend his time concentrating on nonpolitical subjects like architecture,
automobiles, or highways. (Unlike Stalin, he traveled widely
throughout his adopted country.) He was content with laying down
general and often vague lines of policy, although he could also inter¬
fere in anything he chose, especially when it came to Jews, foreign
policy, or war. He would postpone decisions until the last minute, if
he did not avoid making them altogether. Likewise, he frequently
arrived late, if at all, for appointments. He either gave long mono¬
logues or sat in sullen silence. He rejected working with others and
frequently refused to accept the advice of experts. When he deliber¬
ated it was only with himself. The despotic and ill-tempered nature
that one of his early teachers had noted flourished as he grew older.
His rages and stubbornness were like the temper tantrums of a child
who had never learned to become a part of a give-and-take adult
world. He had few friends, and one of them, Ernst Rohm, the leader
of the SA, he had killed during the purge of June 1934.

Other characteristics became apparent only after Hitler was
chancellor. He was frequently absent from Berlin, preferring his moun¬
tain retreat at Berchtesgaden, which made him inaccessible to impor¬
tant ministers, especially during diplomatic crises. He did not believe
in informing officials of their tasks until the last minute, when they
were told only the absolute essentials. He retained the power to reject
or confirm any legislation, but was unconcerned with its preparation.
He allowed the government to proliferate into numerous departments
and ministries that largely worked independently of each other.
Despite the Nazis’ claim that their regime was super-efficient, this

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

system created a bloated bureaucracy and enormous inefficiencies.
Further chaos and duplication was caused by Hitler not giving written
or explicit orders and, as mentioned, sometimes giving the same task
to two different people. He would test and defend diametrically
opposed points of view with different people, making it even more dif¬
ficult for contemporaries - and historians - to determine what his real
opinions were on a given issue. He was hypersensitive to any attempt
to impose the slightest institutional or legal restriction on his authority.
Like Stalin and Mussolini, he relied on those who were personally loyal
to him, prizing loyalty far above competence.

Hitler’s unbureaucratic style of rule created a huge void in docu¬
mentation. (He did not even make marginal comments on documents.)
Historians to this day are puzzled as to whether there was method
in his madness, or whether his management style was simply
the result of laziness and erraticism. It could easily have been all of
them. By creating or allowing chaos he made himself all the more
indispensable as the one person who could untangle confused lines of
authority. He was the ultimate arbiter in a heterogeneous party and
the only source of unity in a disorderly government. Even the Nazi
party deteriorated in influence (but not in numbers) after Hitler came
to power, as did the Communists and Fascists in Russia and Italy
respectively. The NSDAP was incapable of surviving on its own or
of producing a new leader, and Hitler, like Stalin and Mussolini,
made no realistic arrangements for a successor, fearing that such a
person might try to replace him prematurely. Unlike Italy, there was
no Grand Council or monarch who could theoretically depose the
Fiihrer.

Fortunately for Hitler, the public, both domestic and foreign, was
unaware of the chaotic and inefficient nature of the Nazi government.
By remaining aloof from the rough and tumble of political infighting,
and especially from most controversial decisions and actions, Hitler
retained his popularity, while anger was deflected to the Nazi party,
whose popularity steadily declined after 1933. Hitler never so much
as attended an execution let alone large-scale repressions. His sepa¬
ration from the party and unpopular decisions was reinforced by a
carefully cultivated Fiihrer myth that depicted him as a wise and

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

moderate leader who was opposed to radical elements in his own
party. Hitler was portrayed as a God-fearing and deeply religious
man who would protect the country from atheistic communism.
Consequently, even those people who had never subscribed to Nazi
ideology could, in good conscience, continue to support the
chancellor (see Plate 10). There was, in fact, far more rapport bet¬
ween Hitler and the German people than there had been between
Emperor Wilhelm II and his subjects. Only a few people remained
immune to the Fiihrer cult: dedicated Marxists, some highly reli¬
gious people, a few exceptional intellectuals, and some members of
the upper middle class.

To protect his image, Hitler never appeared in public wearing
glasses, preferring instead to read from a large-face typescript pro¬
duced on a “Fiihrer” typewriter. He hated physical exercise except
for downhill walks to a waiting car. His only physical prowess was
his ability to hold out his right arm for hours, giving the Nazi salute
during parades, which was achieved with the help of a chest
expander (see Plate 11). Unlike Mussolini, Hitler would never have
dreamed of being photographed bare-chested; Likewise, he never
engaged in sports in case they made him look undignified or
inferior. For the same reason there are few pictures of him laughing
or smiling. After his first few months in office he was rarely photo¬
graphed in civilian clothing. The Fiihrer myth was also reinforced
by some of Hitler’s personality traits. Many people, from secretaries
to foreign statesmen, have testified to his ability to be amiable, cor¬
dial, extraordinarily charming, and persuasive. He joked and
laughed readily - as long as the joke or the camera was not on him.
He could be magnanimous toward someone who committed a faux
pas in his presence. His private mode of living was modest and
unassuming. His villa in Berchtesgaden was comfortable but not
grandiose before 1935. He even waived his chancellor’s salary,
although this was not as great a sacrifice as it appeared because of
his royalties from Mein Kampf. Eventually translated into 16 lan¬
guages, it sold over 10 million copies and netted him some 8 million
RM. Hitler was not financially corrupt but he did not hesitate to
corrupt his generals with monetary bribes.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

Even foreigners who were not taken in by the Fiihrer myth under¬
estimated Hitler, especially before his rise to power, and saw him as
more foolish than dangerous. This attitude is perhaps best exempli¬
fied by a letter that Charlie Chaplin sent to Hitler in October 1933.
The star of silent movies wrote that he could forgive Hitler for stealing
his mustache and appearing in more films than he had, but not, how¬
ever, for getting more laughs.

If Hitler could have maintained some degree of objectivity about
himself, the Fiihrer myth might have remained a fairly harmless way of
compensating for the regimes lack of ideological unity and clarity, and
could have been the cement which held the party together. Instead, by
1936 at the latest, he fell victim to the idea that he was infallible. He
intimated that his insights were God-given and that he was an instru¬
ment of Providence. A mistake, by definition, was something that did
not accord with his dogmatic opinion, and the words “I don’t know”
never escaped his lips. Ultimately, this characteristic impaired his
judgment and led to his downfall. The Fiihrer cult inevitably resulted
in Hitler being surrounded by flatterers and sycophants who would
not dream of criticizing him or engaging him in rational debate. As
with Stalin and Mussolini, the most banal platitudes that came from
his lips were accepted as the words of a genius.

Hitler’s Private Life and Relations with Women

Hitler’s appearance and private life frequently fell far short of his
heroic image. Physically, he did not match the Nordic ideal of a tall
blond-haired superman. At the same time, contrary to anti-Nazi pro¬
paganda and the view of many historians, Hitler was not short. At five
feet nine inches he was, if anything, slightly taller than the norm for
his place and generation. Although he is best remembered for his
mustache and brown hair, which constantly fell down over his eyes,
contemporaries who met him were most impressed by his piercing
light blue eyes. Hitler was not muscular, but he did succeed in avoid¬
ing a middle-age paunch. Much less impressive was his body odor
and bad breath.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

Hitler posed as a great lover of the arts, and in fact showed more
interest in the arts than any German ruler since the “mad” king,
Ludwig II of Bavaria, in the nineteenth century. His tastes were those
of the German and Austrian middle class around the turn of the
century. He retained his youthful enthusiasm for the operas of Richard
Wagner, almost certainly because they appealed to his love of the
grandiloquent and bombastic, but otherwise showed little interest in
music, except for Verdi’s Aida and Viennese operettas, with Franz
Lehar’s The Merry Widow being his favorite musical composition. He
ignored symphonic works and chamber music.

Like Stalin, Hitler loved movies, one or two of which he would
watch every evening along with a newsreel, until the habit was broken
in the middle of World War II. He preferred westerns, adventure
movies, and light musicals featuring legs as opposed to movies with
tragic plots or travelogues. His two favorite movies were Snow White
and the Seven Dwarfs and King Kong. He was also fond of Mickey
Mouse cartoons. In addition, he had a taste for imported porno¬
graphic movies, even though they were proscribed for the general
public. He watched some movies ten times, but would never invite a
famous pianist to perform or a scholar to speak to him and his guests.
Again like Stalin, his social evenings lasted far into the night; he usu¬
ally did not retire until two o’clock in the morning or later.

To the outside world Hitler, who was a vegetarian and nonsmoker,
appeared to lead an austere and celibate life selflessly devoted to the
state. Some people have speculated that he was homosexual, and
Mussolini once referred to him as a “horrible sexual pervert.” In fact,
Hitler enjoyed the company of women even though, or perhaps
because, he regarded them as intellectually inferior (see Plate 12). At
the suggestion of his propaganda minister, Josef Goebbels, he
refrained from marriage (until the last day of his life), so that he could
maintain the image of being devoted solely to the welfare of the Reich.
Nevertheless, unbeknownst to the German public, he had a number
of mistresses. What is interesting about these women is that they
were all around 20 years younger than he was, about the same
age differential as that between his parents. Eva Braun, his last and
best-known girlfriend, was born 23 years after Hitler. All of them

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

eventually committed suicide or at least tried to do so. Despite his low
opinion of women, Hitler gave them the impression they were
beautiful and worthy of his admiration. He was never cross with his
secretaries. Women were able to say blunt things to him that, coming
from men, would have cost them their freedom at the very least.

There were numerous and even striking similarities between the three
totalitarian dictators. All of them had modest social origins, which
they exploited to prove that they understood the grievances of the
common man. They also had domineering fathers and nurturing
mothers, a weak formal education, and handicaps that would certainly
have precluded them from attaining power under the far more stable
social and political conditions of prewar Europe. They all had an
excellent memory but almost certainly also an inferiority complex.
All of them were schoolyard bullies, and did not have many friends as
children and none as adults. Foreign travel was very limited both
before and during their dictatorships. None of them held a regular job
for any length of time prior to launching their political career, nor did
they have the training for any other profession. All of them regarded
women as intellectually inferior and as merely good for sexual
gratification and domestic entertainment. Not one of them was a
successful husband or father. They all dressed modestly and none had
an impressive physical appearance; they were all touchy about how
they were depicted in photographs. They all had rather plebeian
interests when it came to the fine arts and entertainment. None of
them had what could be described as a normal personality, but neither
were they clinically insane. All of them encouraged the creation of a
cult of personality which even foreigners could not always resist. The
management styles of Hitler and Mussolini were chaotic. Stalin, for
his part, was more of a “hands on” ruler. If Hitler and Mussolini were
actors who frequently appeared in newsreels, Stalin was a puppeteer.
They were all more interested in power than in wealth. They did not
see themselves as tyrants but rather as leaders who were sacrificially
devoted to historic missions. They all had only a small capacity for
love, but an unbounded capacity for hate. All of them had an
unquenchable belief in themselves.

Personalities and Policies of the Dictators

Among the few people the dictators respected were each other.
Hitler regarded only Mussolini and Stalin as his equals. Despite
Hitler’s later disillusionment with Italy’s poor performance in World
War II, he never betrayed his friend. His feelings of comradeship
with the Duce were genuine, which he demonstrated on a number of
occasions. Stalin also considered Hitler a “very able man” who, like
himself, had risen from lowly origins to become a world historic
figure. He was especially impressed with Hitler’s purge of the SA in
June 1934. For his part, Hitler thought Stalin one of the most extraor¬
dinary figures in world history and believed that the Soviet Union
would disintegrate without him. After his victory in World War II he
planned to spare Stalin and exile him to a spa, whereas he intended
to have President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston
Churchill hanged. Stalin also had positive feelings toward Mussolini,
and there is some evidence that those feelings were reciprocated.
Mussolini’s Italy, for example, recognized the new Communist
regime in the Soviet Union in 1924, the first Western country to do
so. Good diplomatic and even cultural relations were thereafter
maintained between the two countries until World War II.

Totalitarian Economies

The economies ... were moderately successful as long as they
pursued traditional and pragmatic goals.

Nothing differentiated the Soviet Union from the other two totali¬
tarian dictatorships more than its economic policies. In the fascist
states private property, except for that of German Jews, was not
adversely affected by totalitarianism. The policy of the Communist
government of Russia, however, was nothing less than to own and
control almost all property, from agricultural land to factories, trans¬
portation systems, and natural resources, but it did not extend to
personal possessions like clothing and home furnishings. This policy
alone meant that the Soviet regime had to be far more totalitarian in
its authority and had to intervene more intimately in the lives of its
citizens than either the Nazis or the Fascists. Stalin attempted to do
what no absolute ruler before him would have dared to. It amounted
to changing a whole country’s way of life. It is no wonder, then, that

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

Totalitarian Economies

Stalin’s First Five-Year Plan, launched in 1928, is sometimes called the
“second Bolshevik revolution.” To carry it out, Stalin virtually declared
war on his own country and reduced its real per capita income by half.

The End of the New Economic Policy

The Russian economy recovered fairly quickly from the devastation
wrought by three years of world war and three more of civil war. In
many cases, all that was needed to resume agricultural production
was the return of peasant soldiers to their fields. Industries could
often restore production as soon as machines were repaired and the
transportation systems functioned normally again. In neither case
were huge investments of time or money necessary. By 1928 the pro¬
cess of recovery was largely complete. Actual progress, however, was
likely to be much slower and more expensive because it required
building new and more modern farms and factories, not merely
restoring old ones.

The Achilles heel of the Soviet economy was always agriculture.
For Lenin and other Communists, allowing peasants to confiscate the
lands of noble estates and a few wealthier peasants had never been
more than a temporary expedient. Productivity actually declined dur¬
ing the 1920s compared to prewar years because small peasant farms
were less efficient than noble estates had been, and peasants were
happy to consume more of their own produce. Compared to the last
prewar years, only one-third as much food was available in the cities.
In 1913, 12 million tons of grain had been exported. During Lenin’s
New Economic Policy the figure almost never reached 3 million tons.
Production was also held down by the widespread use of primitive
farming implements such as horse-drawn wooden plows. Because
marketable food was reduced, both urbanization and industrializa¬
tion slowed. In retrospect the NEP was a golden age for peasants - a
time when they owned more land and had a higher standard of living
than ever before or were to have for many decades thereafter. To them
the NEP was a welcome and permanent arrangement, not a tempo¬
rary tactic.

Totalitarian Economies

For the party faithful, however, the NEP had always been an
embarrassing compromise with the evil forces of capitalism. The
Communist leaders were not rational economists, although they liked
to portray themselves as such to the West. Instead, they were advocates
of a millenarian utopia based on the elimination of private property;
once the new economic system was achieved, a superior society would
emerge. By 1924, some Communists had accepted the NEP as
legitimate. Even Stalin, at this time, posed as a moderate and supported
the NEP.

Things began to change as early as 1926-7, when the more
prosperous peasants, known as kulaks, saw the price of their
produce arbitrarily cut by 20 percent by the government. Not
surprisingly, the most efficient farmers lost their incentive to pro¬
duce. Had the government planned to create a food shortage it
could hardly have done a better job. By 1928 prices paid to peasants
did not even cover the cost of production. The party had created its
own agricultural crisis.

The refusal of peasants to sell or grow more food gave Stalin the
pretext for which he had been waiting. The collectivization of 25 mil¬
lion mostly small Russian farms into a relatively small number of
large-scale and presumably more efficient farms had been a goal of
the Communists since before the Bolshevik Revolution. The move
would insure that crops remained under the party’s control, from
planting to consumption. Peasants would no longer be able to defy
the regime by withholding a portion or all of their crops from the
market. Now the government could buy produce at artificially low
prices and sell surpluses to foreign countries. Huge profits from these
sales would finance the country’s industrialization and obviate the
need for borrowing from abroad.

Stalin had no inhibitions about the use of force and no patience for
education. He decided to use such violence against the kulaks that
poorer peasants would be terrorized into joining collectivized farms.
Even though the idea that kulaks were the objects of hatred and
jealousy of poorer peasants was mostly pure fantasy, by encouraging
attacks on the more enterprising peasants Stalin removed any
would-be natural leaders who might have put up the greatest

Totalitarian Economies

resistance to collectivization. He wanted to hit the peasants so hard
and so massively that they would have no opportunity to organize
resistance. By the late 1920s, his power was nearly absolute and his
remaining opponents could no longer put up an effective resistance.
He dismissed the grave fears expressed by moderates as groundless.

In his desire to modernize the Soviet Union, Stalin wanted to
control all aspects of the Soviet economy and the lives of all its
citizens; he also needed to provide food for the burgeoning cities.
These ambitious goals blinded him to economic realities. It is unlikely
that he foresaw the economic disaster that collectivization would lead
to. He was convinced that a socialist transformation of the country¬
side would bring great progress, and no amount of evidence to the
contrary would dissuade him from this view. Collectivization, more¬
over, was at least as much political as it was economic: 250,000 large
collective farms, each carefully monitored by Communist party
agents, would be much easier to control than 25 million privately
owned farms. Stalin’s claim that collectivization had mass peasant
support was pure nonsense. Collectivization was strictly a revolution
imposed from above.

Stalin’s War against the Peasants

The First Five-Year Plan initially called for the collectivization of only
15 to 20 percent of all peasant holdings. When the people on these
lands resisted, however, force was used against them and the whole
process was accelerated. Collectivization turned out to be one of the
greatest atrocities and nonmilitary, man-made disasters in the twen¬
tieth century, comparable only to Mao Zedongs collectivization
program in China and Hitler’s slaughter of the Jews.

Like the Jews of Germany, Soviet peasants, especially the “wealthier”
ones, were the object of years of hostile propaganda portraying them
as the embodiment of social evil: along with “bourgeois specialists,”
they were seen as loathsome and repulsive “enemies of the people.”
Kulaks were not even given a chance to join the collective farms.
Officials in charge of “dekulakization” were told to rid themselves of

Totalitarian Economies

“rotten liberalism” and “bourgeois humanitarianism” 1 in order to
eliminate the decayed remnants of capitalist farming. All the kulaks’
possessions were confiscated and declared state property. In the mid¬
dle of the winter they were robbed of their warm clothes, including
underwear and boots. Those who were not killed immediately were
arrested and herded, 50 at a time, into freight cars and sent to labor
camps in northern Russia or Siberia. An estimated 10 to 12 million
were deported in this fashion, about one-third of whom had died of
cold and hunger by 1935. If their children happened to survive they
too carried the social stigma, noted in their identity papers, of
belonging to a hated class, and as such were denied education and
jobs and were liable to be arrested.

Like the Jews a few years later, kulaks were considered guilty, not
because of anything they had done, but because of who they were.
Even if they gave away all their property, they remained kulaks in the
eyes of the government. The biggest difference between the Jewish
Holocaust and the atrocity perpetrated in the Soviet Union was that
the latter involved an indigenous population in peacetime. It is also
much less well known to this day because it affected primarily illiterate
and semiliterate peasants who were rarely in a position to make their
plight known to the world.

By the end of 1931, a massive famine had broken out, especially in
Ukraine and the northern part of the Caucasus isthmus, with the ethnic
Germans of the Lower Volga region being hit the hardest. The harvests
of 1931-2 were not in themselves small enough to cause starvation.
Rather, famine was the result of grain being taken from the peasants in
order to finance the unrealistic goals of industrial development. In the
still fairly normal harvest of 1930, 85.5 million tons of grain were
harvested, 22 million tons were extracted from the peasants, and 5.5
million tons were exported. In 1931 the harvest dropped to 69.5 million
tons, of which 28.8 million tons were taken from the peasants and 4.5
million tons exported. In the middle of the famine, in 1932,29.5 million
tons of grain were procured from the peasants.

1 Quoted in Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the
Terror-Famine (New York, 1986), 147.

Totalitarian Economies

The peasants were reduced to eating rotten food rejected by pigs,
such as potatoes, beets, and other root vegetables. They also ate weeds,
leaves, bark from trees, frogs and snails, the meat of diseased horses
and cattle, mice, rats, sparrows, ants, earthworms, the leather soles of
shoes, and in some cases even human flesh. Not surprisingly, many
died of food poisoning before they could starve to death. At the end
of 1932, the Soviet government introduced domestic passports but
denied them to peasants in order to prevent them from moving to the
cities. No person without a passport could live or work in a city or
obtain food rations. Ukrainians were told that there were “bourgeois
nationalists” in their midst who were responsible for food shortages.
Communist officials said that those who had died were lazy and had
refused to work on the collective farms. When famine had struck the
Soviet Union in 1921, Lenin had successfully appealed to the world
for help. Stalin’s response to the food crisis was to deny that there was
even a famine. Those who mentioned it were accused of making anti-
Soviet statements and given three to five years in prison. Stalin would
not even tolerate party officials giving him confidential reports on the
famine. To admit that there was a famine would have undermined the
government’s claim that collectivization had been a huge success.

The West received only contradictory, and therefore seemingly
inconclusive, reports about the systematic brutality and famine being
suffered by the Soviet peasantry. The main reason for the lack of accu¬
rate information was that foreign visitors, who were treated like roy¬
alty, were allowed to see only model collective farms, where peasants
were well housed and fed, and raised healthy cattle. Foreign journal¬
ists, who after 1933 were kept out of famine areas altogether, had to
file their reports with the Soviet authorities before sending them to
their editors, and would lose their visas if their dispatches discussed
the famine. The International Red Cross was also prevented from
investigating the famine. The French Radical leader and two-time
prime minister Edouard Herriot was able to spend five days in
Ukraine in 1933, but he was permitted to see Kiev only after its streets
had been cleared of homeless children, beggars, and starving people.
The US State Department, which was kept well informed of the
famine by the American consulate in Riga, Latvia, refused to make

Totalitarian Economies

any information available to the American public for fear it would
damage US-Soviet relations. President Roosevelt was trying at this
time to cultivate good relations in order to counteract the growing
danger presented by Germany and Japan. The famine could not, how¬
ever, be kept entirely secret from the Soviet people, who could see
starving peasants from trains. The Soviet government explained this
phenomenon by claiming that there was malnutrition when peasants
had refused to sow or reap properly.

One of the few people who finally exposed the truth about the
famine was a man who, fearing reprisals, used the pseudonym Miron
Dolot to tell a horrifying tale about the ordeal in his village. It began
with the most prominent villagers - the teacher, legal clerk, and store
owner - being arrested and deported by Communist agents, part of
a legion of 100,000 fanatical urban party activists who invaded the
countryside to impose collectivization. With their leaders gone, the
remaining farmers were defenseless. The village church, the pride of
the community, was destroyed in a few minutes. Graves were looted
for jewelry and other valuables. The villagers’ livestock was expro¬
priated for the collective farms before proper housing and forage for
the animals had even been prepared. The horses were turned loose
and died of disease before tractors could replace them. A “Bread
Procurement Commission” continued to search for hidden food in
the middle of the famine and confiscated whatever foodstuffs it
could find.

Estimates of how many people died in the famine and in the whole
process of dekulakization vary widely. Four to six million peasants
died during the famine of 1932-3, the majority of them being
Ukrainians, Poles, Germans, and Jews; nearly half were children.
Another 3.5 million eventually perished in forced labor camps as
result of collectivization. Estimates of all deaths from unnatural
causes between 1930 and 1937, including starvation, beating, or over¬
work in labor camps, range as high as 14 million. Altogether, no fewer
than 120 million peasants were affected in one way or another. Of the
20 to 25 million Ukrainian peasants, about one-fourth to one-fifth
died. Rural mortality was twice as high in Ukraine as it was in the
Russian Federation because food relief was not permitted to cross the

Totalitarian Economies

border from Russia into Ukraine. The attack on Ukrainian peasants
had been preceded by an assault on the Ukrainian intelligentsia. Of
approximately 240 authors who wrote in the Ukrainian language,
about 200 were killed during the 1930s.

The tens of millions of peasants who survived still found them¬
selves forced from their ancestral homes. About 17.7 million peasants
managed to move into the rapidly industrializing cities, many of them
secretly and illegally, but millions of others were prevented from relo¬
cating because they could not obtain internal passports in 1932. The
luckiest peasants were able to stay in their homes, but they had to
surrender their carts, farm implements, horses, and livestock.

Historians can make only rough estimates of the human losses due
to collectivization because no figures were ever published by the
Soviet government. It was much more forthcoming, however, about
animal losses. Rather than see their livestock driven into the collective
farms, peasants slaughtered them. Other farm animals simply died
from neglect because the collective farms were often run by urban
party members, who had no knowledge of animal husbandry. Between
1928 and 1934, the number of horses in the country declined from 32
to 15.5 million, the number of cattle from 60 to 33.5 million, pigs
from 22 to 11.5 million, and sheep and goats by 65.1 percent. Overall,
livestock fell from an index of 100 in 1928 to 44 in 1933, while grain
production declined from 100 to 81.5, even though the Five-Year Plan
had called for it to increase to 155. Even these figures probably under¬
stated the reality. This was a disaster from which Soviet agriculture
did not recover for 25 years.

Stalin’s role in collectivization is more controversial than one might
suppose given that he initiated the process in December 1929, when
he ordered the kulaks to be wiped out as a class. His only visit to rural
Russia occurred in 1928; thereafter, he never inspected a collectivized
farm. His only contact with peasants consisted of staged photographs
and paintings. It was Stalin who finally decided to end the killing and
enforced starvation. Some historians have pointed out that, as with
Hitlers role in the Jewish Holocaust, no document has ever been
found in which Stalin ordered the deliberate starving of peasants.
Other historians have also noted that, once begun, collectivization

Totalitarian Economies

developed a momentum of its own. Victims of the repression were
not necessarily always kulaks, even by the broad and flexible stan¬
dards of the Communist party. They were often economically
marginal people who were considered a burden on the community.
Another favorite target was women who had violated the sexual
mores of the countryside. Other hostilities were directed against the
village political, social, and economic elite, especially outsiders. Any
social antagonisms that already existed in cities were intensified by
the famine. Not until the spring of 1933 did the government attempt
to alleviate the suffering.

Even if every atrocity connected with collectivization cannot be
directly attributed to Stalin, it is interesting to see how easily he could
interrupt the process and then resume it. After just four months of
“voluntary” collectivization, so much chaos had been created that
even Stalin, apparently, realized that a breathing spell was necessary.
Instead of admitting his miscalculations, however, on March 2,1930
he accused local party officials of creating disorder because they were
“dizzy with success.” Peasants would now be free, if they wished, to
return to their own farms. Consequently, in just two months the
number of collectivized farms shrank from 50.3 percent to 23 percent
of all farms and continued to decline until the fall. But the reversal
turned out to be only temporary, and collectivization soon resumed.
By the end of 1934,90 percent of the sown acreage in the Soviet Union
was on 240,000 collectivized farms.

From the beginning, the collectivized farms were a failure. There
were no advance plans for their organization, their size, or even how
the peasant hands should be paid. The most hardworking and enter¬
prising peasants, the kulaks, were either dead or in work camps, and
were therefore unavailable to work on the new farms. The Soviet
Union’s industrial base was still simply too small to provide the
necessary machinery. The autonomy of the farms’ management was
severely limited, which prevented them from taking initiatives and
adapting themselves to local circumstances. Confronted by
inadequate resources, unrealistic quotas, and hostile peasants, the
managers of farms made a show of success by simply inventing
production figures - also a common practice in factories. As much

Totalitarian Economies

as possible they ignored government orders. Ironically, the only
successful aspect of the farms was the small private plots that Stalin
permitted as a concession to the peasants’ traditional way of life,
even though he had opposed such an idea in 1929. Families were
allowed one cow and a few pigs and sheep on about one acre of land.
Even though they made up only 3.8 percent of the nation’s cultivated
land in 1938, these plots were responsible for not less than 21.5
percent of the country’s farm produce. In 1950 they produced over
half of all the Soviet Union’s food.

By the late 1930s, when collectivization was complete and the new
giant farms were well established, the average Soviet citizen’s diet was
much worse than it had been in 1928. They ate about the same amount
of bread, but less of everything else, especially meat and dairy prod¬
ucts. Nor did conditions improve in later decades despite huge sums
of money spent on Soviet agriculture. As late as the 1980s, 25 Soviet
peasants were still needed to do the work of four farmers in the United
States. The farms continued to be run, in many cases, by incompe¬
tents who had to deal with a huge bureaucracy and the intrusion of
ignorant and distant central planners. As for the Soviet peasants, they
regarded their new status as worse than the serfdom from which they
had escaped in 1861. They were ruthlessly exploited and deprived of
any control over their own lives. Not until 1975 were they permitted
internal passports, without which they had been unable to leave their
villages.

The First Five-Year Plan and Industrialization

Originally, collectivization was merely supposed to be part of the First
Five-Year Plan, and not a very big part at that. The plan, despite its
name, was not the beginning of economic planning in the Soviet
Union. Production had been planned each year during the NEP. Even
during the first and subsequent Five-Year Plans, planning was
adjusted annually and was subject to immediate revision. Given these
facts, it is legitimate to ask what was unique about the Five-Year Plans.
Essentially their purpose was psychological or propagandistic. The

Totalitarian Economies

First Five-Year Plan called for gross industrial output to increase by
235.9 percent and labor productivity to rise by 110 percent. These
pseudo-scientific figures, however, were purely for show. The plans
were much less a rational method for fulfilling human needs, or even
the demands of the regime, than they were a method of inspiring or at
least intimidating the Soviet people to work harder. The five-year
time span was long enough to make huge gains seem possible, but
short enough to make the sacrifices look temporary. The regime did
not even expect the goals of the plans to be fulfilled.

The psychological purpose behind the First Five-Year Plan appears
to have succeeded, at least for a time. There was much genuine enthu¬
siasm in the cities and among party activists in the countryside, and
an understanding of the need for belt-tightening. The spirits of the
party faithful were revived after having been depressed by the com¬
promises of the NEP. Enthusiasm was kindled by the frequent use of
military terms such as “agricultural front,” “militant discipline,” and
“shock brigades.”

A number of gimmicks were used to increase industrial produc¬
tion, along with coercion. Trade unions lost their independence
including the right to strike - which was now called “sabotage” - and
to collective bargaining. They became mere government agencies to
enforce policies and to spread technical education. The early Bolshevik
idea of workers managing factories was abandoned. Shock brigade
groups were organized in 1928 to set spectacular examples for other
workers. Needless to say, they were not popular and some members
were actually killed by other workers (see Plate 13). Relief payments
for able-bodied workers ended in October 1930, and on-the-job dis¬
cipline was now enforced by terror. In November 1932 workers guilty
of one day’s unexcused absence from their job were subject to dis¬
missal. In January 1939 this “permissive” law was changed to stipulate
that employees who were more than 20 minutes late for work would
be fired. In 1940 so-called industrial commissariat chiefs were given
the authority to transfer workers and their families from place to
place to fill different factories’workforce needs.

When it came to wages, Stalin, in an early example of his off-and-on
pragmatism, preferred an almost capitalistic carrot to a dictatorial

Totalitarian Economies

stick. “Wage equalization,” which had been retained in state indus¬
tries by Lenin, was denounced by Stalin in 1931 and replaced by
payments for piecework in most industries. Stalin also called for clear
distinctions between wages (paid by the factories but dictated by the
state) for skilled and unskilled labor, which did not differ significantly
from those used in the West.

The best thing that can be said about industrialization during the
First Five-Year Plan was that it was not as bad as collectivization.
Nevertheless, the extreme haste with which it was pursued created
chaos and inefficiency. Many problems arose before 1930 from the
dismissal of numerous “bourgeois specialists,” especially engineers,
although by the end of 1936 Stalin had reversed his position on this
issue. Then there were factories built, for which no machinery was
available, while some machines were delivered to plants that were
unable to house them. Untrained labor would be hastily recruited in
one place while skilled workers sat idle in another. Much of the labor,
including the slave labor of political prisoners and kulaks, was wasted
on nearly useless projects such as the White Sea-Baltic Canal. Stalins
battle cry to “overfulfill quotas” was sheer nonsense, because factories
could not increase production without using up more supplies than
had been allotted them by the plan.

Stalin hailed the First Five-Year Plan as a “success” in 1932, one
year ahead of schedule. The Second Five-Year Plan began immedi¬
ately which called for the consolidation of gains made in the first plan
and a restoration of the quality of manufactured goods (see Plate 14).
Extravagant claims of industrial progress as a result of the first and
subsequent plans were made for both domestic and foreign consump¬
tion, and for a long time they were believed, even in the West. Most of
the figures were simply falsified. Instead of the fivefold increase in
industrial production for 1929 to 1941 claimed by Stalin at the time,
the true figure was closer to one and a half times, about equal to the
rate experienced by Germany during the same period and less per
year than what the Soviets themselves had achieved during the NEP.

The standard of living for urban workers in early 1941 was no
higher than it had been in 1928, or even 1913, though the gross
national product (GNP) was 71 percent higher in 1937 than it had
been in 1928. Housing was desperately overcrowded and unsanitary,

Totalitarian Economies

and could not keep up with the rapid pace of industrialization. The
closing of many private workshops at the end of the NEP had reduced
the availability of consumer goods which the state was unable and
unwilling to provide. Clothing and shoes, in particular, were in
shorter supply. However, because of their isolation, many people in
the Soviet Union thought that living conditions in Depression-
stricken Europe were even worse than theirs. The misery of everyday
life was occasionally interrupted by various celebrations when food
and drink were plentiful. Meanwhile, the only people to see a real
improvement in their living standards were the new managerial elite,
favored writers and artists who supported the modernization effort in
their works, as well as members of the secret police. This elite lived in
fine houses, were driven about in limousines, and sent their children
to special schools; their servants shopped in stores that were closed to
the general public. These privileges were even proudly announced in
the Soviet press.

Apologists for Stalin have argued that, chaotic as industrialization
was, it had been necessary to meet the challenge of Nazi Germany.
The problem with that argument is that when the First Five-Year Plan
began in 1928, Adolf Hitler was a virtually unknown figure even in
Germany. No one in or outside Germany took the Nazi movement
seriously until the Reichstag elections of September 1930, when most
of the worst aspects of industrialization and collectivization in the
Soviet Union had already become apparent. Hitler did not come to
power until 1933, when the First Five-Year Plan had already been
completed. Apologists also make the doubtful claim that the pace of
industrialization achieved by Stalin could have been realized only by
the brutal and wasteful methods he employed. Nevertheless, it is true
that some form of rapid industrialization was a prerequisite for the
Soviet victory in World War II (see Plate 15).

The Fascist Economy

Compared with the massive and truly totalitarian intervention of the
Soviet state in the Russian economy, the role of the state in the
economic affairs of both Italy and Germany seems almost trivial.

Totalitarian Economies

Much of the reason for this difference is the simple fact that neither
Mussolini nor Hitler cared very much about economic matters,
although they did care about the propaganda value of massive
economic projects. Even though anticapitalism was an important
aspect of Fascist and Nazi propaganda, especially in the early years of
both movements, private enterprise continued in the fascist states.
There was little nationalization of private property, with the one
important exception of property belonging to Jews. Nevertheless,
both states attempted to control their economies to some extent in
order to solve particular problems and especially to prepare for war.
This could be done through giving certain sectors of the economy
credits or direct government subsidies. Production in particular
industries was regulated, as were distribution, foreign trade, prices,
and wages. The more important the industry, the greater the govern¬
ment’s intervention when it felt that private initiative was inadequate.
Only rarely, however, did this lead to direct government control of
industries.

Despite the striking differences between communist and fascist
economies, there were some important similarities. All three totali¬
tarian states supported heavy or basic industries like steel, electricity,
and chemicals over consumer-oriented industries. Across the board,
weak consumer demand for goods was perpetuated by low wages.
Nevertheless, these tendencies were far stronger in the Soviet Union
than in Italy or Germany where, by comparison, consumer goods
were abundant, although far less so than in the United States or even
in Great Britain.

The Fascist regime in Italy never created a complete and integrated
economic program, but switched back and forth between differing
policies. In general, the long-term achievements of the government, if
perhaps not always the intentions of the government, were minor cor¬
rections in the private enterprise system. Even direct state investment
in industry began merely as an emergency measure during the Great
Depression.

All three of the totalitarian dictatorships had a penchant for spec¬
tacular public works projects that would be of great propagandistic
value to the regime. In the Soviet Union it was canals (now used in

Totalitarian Economies

large part by foreign tourists), huge dams, large factories, and the
Moscow subway. In Italy and Germany superhighways were probably
the most publicized state-financed works. Unique to totalitarian Italy
was the excavation of the ancient forum and other ruins in and around
Rome. These projects gratified Mussolini’s long-time interest in
Roman history, put a good many people to work, and raised national¬
istic pride in Italy’s long and glorious history. To emphasize the point,
four huge maps displaying the growth of the ancient Roman Empire
were attached to a wall of one of the ruins, where they can be seen to
this day. Mussolini also ordered the construction of a broad avenue
above and through the forum connecting the ancient Colosseum with
the monument to Victor Emmanuel II, the unifier of Italy (see
Plate 16). The avenue served as an ideal staging point for numerous
colorful parades during the Fascist era, which were in part designed
to provide workers with a sense of community and of identification
with the regime. Other public works projects included clearing and
improving ports and harbors, building hydroelectric works, electri¬
fying railways, draining land, and building aqueducts.

Trade unions in both Italy and Germany, in many respects, served
about the same purpose as those in the Soviet Union. They were not
designed to protect workers from exploitation by management, but
were instruments of government control. In both Italy and Germany,
however, they did help to reduce the industrial workers’ sense of
social and cultural isolation by generating a sense of belonging to the
national community. These unions handled social security benefits
and claims for severance pay, and sometimes negotiated contracts
that were beneficial to the workers. They were, however, primarily a
source of employment for lower middle-class bureaucrats.

The Great Depression, which began in 1929, caused both fascist
states to adopt policies of autarky or self-sufficiency. To describe
autarky as a specifically fascist economic policy would be to go too
far. In reality, during the 1930s all the industrialized countries,
including the United States, foolishly tried to protect their existing
domestic industries from foreign competition, and to create new ones
by setting protectionist tariffs so high that they virtually barred
imported goods. At most, Italy and Germany carried this policy

Totalitarian Economies

somewhat further than the democracies because they were trying to
prepare for war. The policy was generally counterproductive because
new domestic enterprises were often less efficient than foreign ones.
In Italy, for example, the increase of wheat production reduced the
need to import inexpensive American and Canadian grain, but it also
reduced the acreage available for growing vegetables, olives, and fruit,
for which Italy was well suited. The result was an overall increase in
the cost of food for Italian consumers.

Another similarity between the fascist states and the democracies
was the attempt to get city folk to return to the small towns and vil¬
lages from which they came. In Italy the government supported
sharecropping contracts and the homesteading of land-reclamation
areas, and virtually prohibited migration from rural locales to towns
and cities. The Fascist regime also tried to “return to traditions” by
praising artisan culture and featuring peasants in traditional dress in
folklore festivals - all part of an unsuccessful attempt to create a par¬
ticularly Fascist mass culture. In the United States the Roosevelt
administration tried to discourage rural migration to cities where
there was high unemployment, and even attempted to get poor
farmers in the Upper Midwest to homestead land in the Matanuska
Valley north of Anchorage, Alaska. In Germany, marriage loans were
made available to farm laborers who promised to remain on the land,
and new farm housing was exempt from taxation. At best, however,
these efforts only retarded the urbanization that had been underway
for over a century.

One way in which Fascist economics did differ from that of both
Nazism and Communism, at least superficially, was its corporativism.
The idea of corporativism initially evolved from the struggle between
industrialists, unions, the ruling party, and the state, and was designed
to settle occasional concrete problems arising from dissatisfied
workers in industry. Later, the idea was broadened into a high-sounding
answer to the harsh individualism of liberal capitalism and the class
warfare of Marxism. In 1934 Italian employees and management in
related industries were brought together in 22 corporations so that
their interests could be harmonized under the joint auspices of labor
courts, which would settle disputes without resorting to strikes. Each

Totalitarian Economies

corporation was to act as a small parliament, with nominal powers to
set wages and conditions of employment. This was supposed to be a
reversion to medieval guilds, which had comprehended all classes
within a single vocation. In each corporation there were Fascist
officials from the Ministry of Corporations who sat with the repre¬
sentatives of labor and management.

The corporative goal of social harmony was admirable, but the big
industrialists prevented any meaningful implementation of the
program. In practice, corporativism turned out to be an elaborate and
expensive fraud because the corporations had little authority and no
autonomy. Their meetings therefore had an academic or theoretical
character. Any rules they drew up were obligatory only if they were
approved by Mussolini. The big beneficiaries were Fascist party
members, for whom a great many jobs were created, and business
people and landlords, who continued to make their own decisions
and no longer had to fear strikes, which had so plagued pre-Fascist
Italy. Even class antagonisms were not reduced: they were merely
driven underground. After the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house
of the Italian Parliament, was abolished in 1938, it was replaced by
a Chamber of Fasces and Corporations in 1939. Eight hundred
members represented the 22 corporations, but they could only make
proposals to Mussolini, not pass legislation.

There were no basic improvements in the already miserable lot of
peasants during the Fascist era. The average size of land holdings
declined under Mussolini until more than 87 percent of the total farm
population owned little more than 13 percent of the land. The biggest
proprietors, who made up only 0.5 percent of the total rural
population, owned nearly 42 percent of the land. Agricultural income,
already bad before the Depression, only worsened after 1929. The
only thing that went up was the peasants’ taxes.

One of the big controversies among historians of Fascist Italy is the
rate and significance of its overall economic growth. Some historians
have correctly pointed out that the growth rate was higher both
during the pre-Fascist Liberal era and again after World War II. Other
historians, however, have noted that raw growth statistics for the pre-
and post-Fascist eras do not take into account the impact of the Great

Totalitarian Economies

Depression. Once that is done, the Italian case looks moderately
successful for a country in its stage of development. During the
Depression, imports fell by 29 percent in Italy while exports fell by
one-quarter. The index of manufacturing, with 1938 being 100,
stood at 90 in 1929 and at 77 in 1931-2. Unemployment, which
was 300,000 in 1929, more than tripled to 1 million in 1933, but was
partially alleviated by popular welfare relief for children and war
veterans dispensed by the Fascist party. In the meantime, workers
saw their real income fall by about 10 percent.

These figures, however bad they were, compare rather favorably
to other countries during the same period. For example, imports
dropped 49 percent in Germany, 51 percent in France, and a whop¬
ping 64 percent in the United States. Unemployment increased
tenfold in Germany between 1928 and 1932 while real wages fell
20 percent. In Britain, with about the same population as Italy,
there were 3 million unemployed by 1932, although its larger
nonfarming population would account for much of the difference.
Using 1913 as one’s base, the growth of Italian industrial production
was even more impressive, with the index reaching 153.8 by 1938,
compared to Nazi Germany with 149.9 and France with 109.4. Only
the Scandinavian countries, and Britain with 158.3, did better during
the same 25-year period.

The Economy of National Socialist Germany

Thinking in economic terms was basically alien to the old guard Nazi
leaders, including Hitler himself. Political goals were placed ahead of
economic ones because it was believed that if these were achieved
they would produce economic benefits. Before the outbreak of World
War II, there was not even a central agency to examine and coordi¬
nate the material demands of the armed forces. Until 1942, there were
no real economic experts in Hitler’s inner circle of associates. No
fundamental restructuring of Nazi Germany’s economy ever took
place. None of this is meant to imply, however, that Hitler was not
interested in economic matters.

Totalitarian Economies

The early economic program of the Nazis, especially the famous 25
Points announced by Hitler in February 1920, was extremely anti-
capitalistic. The 25 Points called for the abolition of unearned income
(or interest), the confiscation of the profits of munitions makers, and
land reform. These ideas, while never officially renounced by the
party, were quietly ignored so as not to antagonize the middle class or
discourage support from big business. Nazi propagandists began to
explain that they had nothing against patriotic businessmen; they
merely opposed Jewish capitalism. Not so quickly forgotten were Nazi
attacks on large, mostly Jewish-owned department stores, mail order
firms, and consumer organizations, all of which hurt the proprietors
of small, family-owned enterprises who had furnished much of the
Nazis’ electoral support right up to 1933.

Once in power, however, the Nazis quickly changed their economic
tune. Even Jewish businessmen, including department store owners,
were left largely undisturbed by the Nazis. Hitler was pragmatic
enough to recognize that the replacement of competent Jewish busi¬
nessmen by incompetent Nazi party members would only increase
the economic chaos and unemployment that had plagued Germany
for more than three years. Consequently, Jewish industrialists some¬
times even received government contracts, and as late as 1937 Jewish
unemployment still stood at a fairly modest 10 percent, which, though
well above the unemployment rate for the rest of the German
population, was very low compared to the general American rate of
16 percent. Thereafter, Hitler no longer felt that the expertise of
Jewish businessmen was essential, so their status, as well as that of all
other German Jews, worsened radically. They not only lost their jobs,
but also their property and in many cases their lives.

The status of non-Jewish factory owners and managers, however,
remained largely unchanged after 1938. Although they had had
relatively little to do with the Nazis gaining power in 1933, they prof¬
ited from the new regime as long as they cooperated with its policies.
Like Stalin in his attitude toward collective farms, Hitler believed that
a relatively small number of big industrialists and department store
owners would be more efficient and productive, and easier to control,
than a much larger number of small businessmen. In most cases,

Totalitarian Economies

German industrialists were willing to go along with the Nazi regime,
partly because they had never been happy with the Weimar Republic,
with its strong unions and generous welfare benefits, not to mention
its poor economic record. They were pleased with the abolition of free
trade unions in May 1933 and the rapid return of prosperity.

On the surface, laborers were among the biggest losers in the Third
Reich. They lost their right to organize, their freedom of movement,
their right to collective bargaining, and to some extent even their
vocational choice. These losses were no doubt keenly felt by roughly
half of the workforce that had been fully employed at the beginning of
1933. However, for those who were unemployed or underemployed, a
group that included a disproportionately large number of young peo¬
ple, these losses were mostly on paper. Industrial workers were by far
the biggest victims of unemployment in the late Weimar Republic.
But by the middle of 1934 the unemployment rate of 1932, the worst
year of the Depression, had been cut by 60 percent; by 1936 it was
back to the 1928 level; and by 1939 there was actually a labor shortage
of about 500,000. At the same time, wages, which by 1932 had fallen
to only 65 percent of their 1929 level, grew by 50 percent between
1933 and 1937, although this increase was not nearly as impressive as
the rise of the GNP by 81 percent by 1939.

Like Martin Luther four centuries earlier, Hitler flattered workers
by referring to the nobility of honest labor. Hitler alleged that they
had been led astray by their Marxist and Jewish leadership. As a result
of this propaganda, and through being included in large Nazi
subsidiary organizations, workers began to lose their isolated prole¬
tarian social environment, which disappeared altogether after 1945.
Workers also benefited from fixed rents and a relative decline in
heating and lighting costs. The ideal of an eight-hour day was in prac¬
tice until shortly before the war in most industries. A “Beauty of
Labor Office,” established in November 1933, helped improve the
external appearance of more than 112,000 factories by clearing away
rubble and cleaning up unkempt areas. Lawns and parks were created
near factories for rest and recreation. Within many factories them¬
selves, lighting was improved, more space was created between
machines, rooms were painted, floors were washed, and rest rooms

Totalitarian Economies

were installed or upgraded. In 1935 an effort was even made to reduce
factory noise.

However, there was also a negative side to the changes affecting
labor. In 1935 a labor pass, or Arbeitsbuch, was reintroduced after
having been abandoned in the middle of the nineteenth century. This
document contained information about training, employment his¬
tory, and family status among other things. No one could be hired
without one. Full employment also eventually became too much of a
good thing. By 1938, the average work week had increased to over 46
hours, and workers in the aircraft industry were sometimes expected
to work 60 hours a week. The lengthening work week began to erode
the social harmony that the Nazis had created.

Peasants, like industrial workers, were also lavished with praise by
the Nazi regime, and jokes about them were forbidden. They were
lauded as the most racially pure Germans and the backbone of the
nation. They worked on German soil and grew products without
which the rest of the population could not live. They had retained the
ancient traditions of German folk songs, dances, and costumes, and
were almost completely unaffected by wicked foreign and Jewish
influences. Hardly a parade or a public celebration took place without
at least a small group of German peasants, in their colorful native cos¬
tumes, being present.

Besides the compliments, the government also guaranteed higher
prices for farm products and took measures to reduce indebtedness,
taxes, and interest on loans to stimulate production. These policies
did have limited success. By 1938-9, farm production was meeting 80
to 83 percent of Germany’s needs compared to only 68 percent in
1927-8. Meanwhile, industrial production was rising by 90 percent.
However, farm income as a percentage of national income declined
from 8.7 percent in 1933 to 8.3 percent in 1937. And the flight from
the countryside was not reversed. By 1939 the allegedly simple plea¬
sures of rural life were enjoyed by only 18 percent of the population
compared to 20.8 percent in 1933, a decline that was also occurring in
Italy, as in all industrialized countries. All in all, peasants were affected
less by the Nazi regime than any other social or economic group, in
sharp contrast to the Soviet Union.

Totalitarian Economies

Without question, Hitler’s greatest economic achievement, and
what did the most to boost his popularity, was his success at wiping
out unemployment. Here demography once again was his ally.
Unemployment declined, in part, simply because fewer young people
entered the job market during the early years of Hitler’s dictatorship
as a result of the low birth rate during World War I. Critics have often
attributed this success to rearmament, but that is at best an exaggera¬
tion. Rearmament began on a large scale only in 1936, by which time
unemployment had already been nearly eliminated. Rearmament
accounted for only 10 percent of the GNP between 1933 and 1937,
and for 15 percent in 1938. The latter figure was half as high again as
the comparable figures for Britain and France. Nevertheless, Germany
did not begin an all-out militarization of its economy until after the
Battle of Stalingrad which ended in early 1943. Rather, unemployment
had been gutted by an ambitious public works program not unlike
that undertaken by President Roosevelt in the United States but far
more successful. Why it was more successful is not easily answered,
but it probably had something to do with the long-term German tra¬
dition of government intervention in the country’s economy. The
regime’s elimination of trade unions also made the economy more
competitive.

In 1933 one billion Reichsmarks (RM) - the equivalent of over
US$5 billion today - was allocated for public works projects such as
highways, canals, public buildings, and bridges. “Pump priming”
grants were also issued to employ construction workers in the renova¬
tion of old buildings and the creation of new housing. Germany thus
undertook deficit spending on an unprecedented scale for a capitalist
country. Work creation projects were responsible for 25 percent of the
German recovery. Unemployment was thus eliminated three times
faster than in the United States.

Among the public works projects was the world’s first national
system of divided superhighways, or autobahns. They were and still
are undoubtedly the most impressive of the public projects, but there
are several popular misconceptions about them. Contrary to public
opinion, they were not conceived by the Nazis. A prototype had
already been built in Italy in 1922, and the Weimar Republic had

Totalitarian Economies

approved the legislation and funding that made their construction
possible. It was only after Hitler took over power, however, that the
actual construction began, so he has undeservedly received all the
credit. It is also unlikely that they were built primarily to facilitate
military aggression, although it is true that they were less vulnerable
to bombing than railroad tracks, and in the late stages of World War
II were sometimes used as substitute landing strips for airplanes.
Otherwise the autobahns had little use during the war because trains
remained far more fuel-efficient than trucks or cars. Their intended
purpose was to relieve unemployment (at which it was only modestly
successful), to bolster the construction and steel industries, and to
encourage tourism. Unlike American interstate highways, whose
construction did not begin for another 25 years, autobahns did not
cut through the center of cities and compete with urban public trans¬
portation. Every effort was made to blend the roads in with their
natural surroundings, and rest areas were constructed to allow motor¬
ists to admire the German countryside. Ironically, even by 1939 only
2.3 percent of the German population owned a motorized vehicle
compared to more than 20 percent in the United States, thus leaving
the magnificent highways almost deserted. The popular attempt to fill
them with a cheap but reliable “people’s car” ( Volkswagen ) produced
only a prewar prototype.

In addition to public works projects, a Four-Year Plan was started
in 1936, the purpose of which was to prepare the economy for war.
Instead of radically changing the German economy, however, the plan
simply added another layer of bureaucracy to the economy. Now state
and party officials, representatives of private industry, the armed
forces, the SS, and other Nazi organizations all had a say in how the
economy should be run. There was no proper arrangement for the
allocation of raw materials, and industrial investment remained
largely unplanned. The plan dictated what companies should pro¬
duce, the kind and level of investments they should make, the prices
and wages they could set, and how much profit they could make.
Although it did not involve as much central planning as the Five-Year
Plans of the Soviet Union, the Four-Year Plan also proved to be
inefficient.

100

Totalitarian Economies

Equally ill advised were efforts, resembling those of Italy and other
industrialized countries, to make Germany self-sufficient. In part this
was another preparation for war. But it was also inspired by traumatic
memories of World War I and its immediate aftermath, when hun¬
dreds of thousands of Germans starved to death and millions more
were malnourished because the British blockade had cut them off
from trade with the rest of the world. Consequently, low-grade ore
was mined, the production of synthetic rubber was pursued, and even
substitutes for coffee and cloth were manufactured. Imports declined
from RM 14 billion in 1928 to between RM 4 billion and RM 5 billion
from 1933 to 1938. Self-sufficiency was increased but was not
complete, and the German standard of living suffered as a result.

Like the economy of Fascist Italy, that of Nazi Germany did not
match the growth rates of the late German Empire or the post-World
War II Federal Republic. Nor did the rate of growth for interwar
Germany as a whole, including the Weimar Republic, not match that
of the United States, Italy, or the United Kingdom. Moreover, the real
wages of Nazi workers were only slightly ahead of those of the Weimar
Republic. If the wages of 1936 are indexed at 100, those of 1928 were
102.2 and those of 1938 were 107.5, with the difference created by
more overtime work rather than a real increases in wages. Consumer
goods were also only slightly more plentiful than in 1928. The German
public was probably unaware that Germany, like most of the rest of
the industrialized world, had started to recover from the Depression
in the summer of 1932. What they did know was that the 6 to 8 million
unemployed workers of 1932 had almost miraculously disappeared
from their streets by 1937.

In generalizing about the economies of the three totalitarian states,
one simple fact stands out: they were moderately successful as long as
they pursued traditional and pragmatic goals. The New Economic
Policy, which allowed for an independent peasantry and small-scale
free enterprise, was quite successful. So too were the economies of
Italy and Germany as long as businessmen were relatively free of
unrealistic government regulations. Trouble began for both fascist
states when they tried to become too economically self-sufficient, a

Totalitarian Economies

101

policy the Soviet Union had pursued ever since its founding and
especially under Stalin. For Germany, new problems were created by
the Four-Year Plan and when war preparations intensified in the last
two prewar years. For the Soviet Union the centrally planned economy
of Five-Year Plans, especially collectivized farms (with the exception of
the allowance of small private plots), was in most respects catastrophic.
For all the totalitarian states, the more pragmatic their programs the
more successful they were; the more doctrinaire and fanatical their
policies became the more disastrous the outcome. This was a pattern
found in more than one aspect of life in the totalitarian states.

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

Propaganda was only as successful as the achievements it hoped
to advertise.

Propaganda, culture, and education may at first glance appear to be
three unlikely subjects to combine in a single chapter. Propaganda, it is
usually assumed, consists of nothing but lies and gross exaggerations,
whereas culture and education are reflections of truth, beauty, and
enlightenment. In fact, the totalitarian parties did not make a big
distinction between the three topics. Culture and education were
propaganda in more subtle forms. Like propaganda, culture had to be
simple enough that everyone could understand it. And, like propa¬
ganda, the purpose of culture and education was to buttress the state
and popularize its policies.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

The Limitations of Propaganda

103

Propaganda is not a modern concept. It has existed since ancient
times. Archaeologists and historians believe that Assyrian reliefs,
showing the severed heads of enemies, were a form of propaganda
intended to terrorize potential enemies. Julius Caesar’s literary
account of campaigns in Gaul was propaganda to build up his
political base in Rome. The Roman Catholic Church was the first to
use the term “propaganda” during the Counter-Reformation in
1622. The first secular use of the word occurred during the
Revolution of 1830 in France. Modern democracies do not hesitate
to use propaganda; state schools, newspapers, radio, and television
all make it easier for them to get their message to the general public.
Contrary to popular belief, propaganda does not necessarily con¬
sist of lies or even distortions. At its most effective it is selective
truth, half-truths, truths out of context, or statements about the
future that cannot be proved or disproved. Nothing is more harm¬
ful to a propagandist than to be caught in an out-and-out lie.
Totalitarian propagandists were also well aware of the universal
fact that negative statements unite people, whereas positive ones
tend to divide them.

Propaganda has acquired negative connotations since the 1930s
when it was closely connected to the Nazis’ chief purveyor of propa¬
ganda, Josef Goebbels. However, Nazi propaganda was neither
unique nor as effective as was commonly supposed. Propaganda is
simply a form of advertising that is part of all organizational activity
in a highly literate society. Like commercial advertising, in the long
run it cannot be any more potent than the product it represents.
Success makes the work of the propagandist easy; failure makes it
next to impossible. Propaganda works best only with those people
who are already inclined to believe it. It is much better at reinforcing
old ideas than changing them. In other words, it must build on
already existing values and mentalities. It does not work when it
flatly contradicts the experiences or observations of its intended
audience. For example, it did not succeed in arousing enthusiasm for
the war, persuading the Germans that Italy was a powerful ally, or

104

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

making them believe that the United States was an evil enemy to be
resisted to the last man. Above all, propaganda is also not the
monopoly of totalitarian states.

Historians have been all too inclined simply to assume that totali¬
tarian propaganda was effective. Newsreels of cheering crowds seem
ample proof that a government’s message and policy were being
enthusiastically received. Looks, however, can be deceiving. It is far
easier to see what the people of totalitarian countries were doing
than to know what they were thinking. There were, after all, no free
elections and no public opinion surveys. Although the dictatorships
suppressed freedom of expression, they also needed to ascertain
popular opinion. Police reports, which have come to light since the
fall of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and more recently the German
Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Soviet Union, help fill
in some of the missing gaps in the regimes’ (and our) knowledge. But
even these reports, though confidential, cannot always be taken at
their face value. The informant may well have been telling his or her
supervisor what the latter wanted to hear.

The totalitarian states exercised far greater control of the mass
media and cultural outlets than the democracies. No form of
cultural expression remained uninfluenced by the policies of the
totalitarian governments, although the degree of control varied
from country to country and from time to time. Democratic gov¬
ernments must deal with an often cantankerous press, which is
often looking for ways to embarrass the powers that be. The democ¬
racies also have very little control over the cinema, the theater, and
the fine arts in general, at least in peacetime, although wartime
controls can be nearly totalitarian.

Another common myth is that people in the totalitarian states were
especially gullible. The contrary was more likely the case. They were
well aware of the monopolistic control of the mass media, and this
awareness made them suspicious of anything they were told by their
government, even when it was absolutely true. But because people
were not allowed to express their views openly, their real gullibility
was in relation to rumors, which were rife.

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

Soviet Propaganda

105

The Soviet Union was the first country in the world to use propa¬
ganda to mobilize an entire nation. The tasks of Soviet propaganda
were in some ways easier and in other ways far more difficult than
those of the fascist states. Prior to World War II, the fascists’ goals of
full employment and the establishment of German and Italian
superiority in the eyes of other nations were popular, whereas the
Soviet goals of the collectivization of farms and rapid industrializa¬
tion demanded huge sacrifices. So daunting were these tasks that
Stalin mostly resorted to force, especially with regard to collectiviza¬
tion. After the German invasion of Russia in 1941, Nazi atrocities did
far more to convince Soviet citizens that the motherland had to be
defended than anything Soviet propaganda ever did.

The generally low level of Soviet education, at least during Stalins
lifetime, was both an advantage and a disadvantage for Soviet propa¬
gandists. While it may have rendered the masses less sophisticated, it
also made it more difficult or even impossible to reach them through
the printed word. However, the drive to raise the literacy rate in the
Soviet Union was itself closely connected with propaganda. Newly
established reading rooms became propaganda centers. Then, with
improvements in Soviet education, especially after Stalin’s death in
1953, the Soviet people became better educated, more politically
sophisticated, and more difficult to influence. When Stalin first
consolidated his dictatorship in 1927, around 25 percent of the mem¬
bers of the Communist party were illiterate, only 7.9 percent had a
secondary education, and a scant 0.8 percent had graduated from
university. These statistics are particularly relevant when it is remem¬
bered that neither Lenin nor Stalin, nor any of their successors, had to
campaign in a general election. Theoretically, they only had to win
over the party’s general assembly, the Congress of Soviets. In reality,
they only needed the approval of the party’s tiny Politburo, and even
there Stalin substituted terror for persuasion.

The geographic isolation of the Soviet Union also greatly reduced
the possibility that Soviet citizens would be able to make comparisons

106

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

between their own country and those in the West that might embar¬
rass the Soviet government. From the beginning, the government
made it impossible for individuals to travel freely to the West and
placed severe restrictions on foreign travelers in the Soviet Union as
well. Those foreigners who were allowed to enter the country were
carefully searched to make sure that they were not bringing in any
“dangerous” literature. Foreign newspapers, except those that were
the official organs of Communist parties, were also unavailable to the
general public in the Soviet Union right up to the collapse of the
regime in 1991. Even though few Russians could afford radios during
Stalin’s rule, foreign radio broadcasts were jammed by transmitters set
up along the Soviet Union’s western borders.

Soviet propagandists also faced some formidable challenges not
found in Germany or Italy. Prior to collectivization, the illiteracy and
geographic dispersion of peasants made it difficult to influence them.
Collectivization opened up new avenues of political influence.
However, it was almost a hopeless task for propagandists to convince
Soviet peasants that it was in their interest to join a collective farm,
hence the resort to force. Soviet propaganda was also hampered by
the low technical quality of its newspapers. To compensate for this
problem the regime created a network of oral agitators, which was
especially important in reaching the illiterate masses in the
countryside.

The close relationship between propaganda and culture in the
totalitarian states is seen in the union of the two in a single office in
Russia and in Germany. In the Soviet Union the Central Committee
Secretariat had a Department for Culture and Propaganda, which
dealt with education, the press, party propaganda, and general culture.
The department made sure that all books, magazines, newspapers,
films, poems, plays, radio scripts, and even scientific papers were
approved in advance of distribution by government censors. In order
to pursue a career in the arts and culture one had to belong to a certain
union. Expressing the wrong ideas could lead to expulsion from the
union and the end of one’s artistic pursuits.

One of the main functions of propaganda in Russia and the other
totalitarian states was to enhance the leadership cult. Photographs

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

107

of Stalin were published in the daily press showing him smoking
his pipe, walking with his comrades across the grounds of the
Kremlin, surrounded by small children, or with his arms around
his daughter, Svetlana. Like politicians everywhere, the totalitarian
dictators believed that the company of children made excellent
propaganda (see Plate 17). Stalin especially loved to be seen
receiving little girls with bouquets of flowers as he observed great
events from the reviewing stand atop Lenin’s mausoleum on Red
Square.

Aside from these appearances at parades and on various national
holidays, Stalin was rarely seen in public, whereas Hitler and Mussolini
were omnipresent in peacetime. Prior to the German invasion of
Russia in 1941, Stalin had spoken on the radio only once. He was
essentially an office dictator. His slow, laborious, uninspired speaking
style would have bored listeners to death in the West, but its sim¬
plicity seems to have been well received by his hand-picked and
unsophisticated audiences in Russia. Most Communist party members
were not intellectuals or theoreticians. They merely wanted to be told
what to do, and Stalin had no problem in obliging.

Fascist Propaganda

An entirely different set of problems confronted fascist propagandists
in both Italy and Germany. Italy still had a partially free press until
1925, and Germany’s, with 4,700 newspapers, had the largest
circulation per capita, and probably the most diverse, in the world at
the beginning of 1933. Therefore, the fascist parties had to compete in
the marketplace of ideas in a free society, where their claims could be
refuted or challenged by an opposition press or an unfriendly
government. Even after they consolidated power, the fascist states did
not enjoy the advantages of geographic isolation with which Stalin
was blessed. Foreigners were free to travel wherever they wished and
to talk with whomever they pleased. Foreign newspapers and maga¬
zines were also available on newsstands, especially in Germany.
Germans and Italians were also allowed to travel abroad. During the

108

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

Winter and Summer Olympic Games of 1936 the German government
made every effort to encourage foreigners to visit the Third Reich.

Although these differences with the Soviet Union were very real,
the fascist states were far from being wide-open societies. Hitler and
no doubt Mussolini were unconcerned with the presence of foreign
newspapers and foreign radio broadcasts because in those days only a
few highly educated people, probably no more than 5 percent of the
population in Germany and even fewer in Italy, could understand
them. Few foreign newspapers were sold in Italy, and those that were
seldom commented on Italian affairs. Traveling abroad for Italians
and Germans was easier in theory than in practice because they were
limited as to the amount of currency they could take with them.
Foreigners traveling in Italy and Germany were likely to find that
natives were reluctant to express their true feelings about their
government. It should also be remembered that foreign tourism,
especially during the Great Depression, was only a fraction of what it
was to become during the second half of the twentieth century.

Nevertheless, it is true that prior to the outbreak of World War II,
Italy and Germany were infinitely less closed to the outside world
than the Soviet Union. The most obvious explanation is that they had
much less to hide. By 1936, unemployment had nearly disappeared in
Germany at a time when it still stood at nearly 17 percent in the
United States. The streets were clean, the population was well fed, and
the country’s pride had been restored. Italy was much slower to
emerge from the Great Depression than Germany, and its standard of
living was still well below that of the democratic states, but to those
foreigners who had not seen the country since 1922, it seemed to be
progressing nicely. Italy’s international prestige in the modern world,
prior to its invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, had probably never been
higher.

Propaganda was important in Fascist Italy in large measure because
Mussolini had begun his career as a journalist and never lost his
interest in newspapers, domestic or foreign, and read them daily. He
cultivated relationships with foreign correspondents, especially those
of the New York Times and pro-Fascist Italian-language newspapers in
the United States. He also wrote numerous newspaper articles and

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

109

prepared daily instructions for the press. By 1928, every journalist in
Italy had to be a registered Fascist. Mussolini made sure that newspa¬
pers did not carry stories of crimes of passion or suicides, epidemics,
natural disasters, or even bad weather reports. With the exception of
the decline in Mafia activity in Sicily, there is no solid evidence that
crime decreased substantially during his dictatorship. However, the
absence of information about it in the press gave the impression that
it had indeed abated. Mussolini was surprisingly slow to establish a
department of propaganda. In 1934, in imitation of the Nazis’Ministry
of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda created a year earlier,
Mussolini set up an undersecretaryship for press and propaganda
headed by his son-in-law, Count Galeazzo Ciano.

Certain conditions in Italy made the spread of propaganda more
difficult there than in Germany. As late as 1931, 21 percent of the
Italian population was completely illiterate, and a much higher
percentage was only semiliterate, effectively ruling out written propa¬
ganda as a tool with which to influence them. Illiterates were even
more vulnerable to the spoken word; but the relative poverty of the
country meant that radios became available as a medium of propa¬
ganda at a much slower rate than in Germany. Whereas 13.7 million
radio sets were owned in houses containing 70 percent of the
population in Germany in 1939 - the highest percentage in the world -
only 1.2 million radio sets existed in Italy in the same year. There were
also 6,000 commercial movie theaters in Germany, compared to just
2,700 in Italy. In partial compensation for the absence of radios in
Italy loudspeakers were erected in the main squares of small towns to
carry radio speeches by Mussolini. In Germany there were 6,000
“loudspeaker pillars” in public squares all over the country so that
almost no one was outside the range of Hitler’s voice.

Nazi Propaganda

The presence of radios was just one advantage Nazi propagandists
had over their counterparts in Italy and the Soviet Union. Virtually
100 percent of the German population was literate. Huge beer halls

110

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

were commonplace and frequently used for political meetings.
Germany’s super-efficient railroads whisked Nazi speakers from town
to town, and Hitler was the first politician in the world to make fre¬
quent use of airplanes in his electoral campaigns beginning in 1932,
20 years earlier than the United States. Another first was Hitler’s
appearance on closed-circuit television screens before the end of the
1930s.

Nearly all historians regard the Nazis’ form of propaganda as the
most original and successful aspect of the regime. Although generally
true, this assertion needs qualification. Hitler himself acknowledged
that he was influenced by the huge marches and massive display of
banners utilized by the pre-World War I Austrian Socialists. And he
openly admired and imitated the highly emotional and inflammatory
propaganda used by Britain and the United States during World War
I, which frequently depicted Germans as subhuman in order to
induce men to volunteer for the armed services (see Plate 18). Hitler
also borrowed the use of the Roman salute - an outstretched right
arm - from Fascist Italy, and probably also the widespread use of
uniforms and symbols. As for the success of Nazi propaganda, it
would be safe to say that the Depression had far more to do with the
Nazis coming to power than their clever propaganda. It also failed to
whip up much enthusiasm for war when fighting appeared immi¬
nent in 1938 and again in 1939, and could not overcome the blows to
public morale from military defeats after the Battle of Stalingrad
ended in early 1943.

What, then, was original and successful about Nazi propaganda?
Most of all, it was its sheer quantity. During the Kampfzeit preceding
their takeover of power, the Nazis held more public rallies than all the
other political parties of Germany combined. For example, in 1932,
when there were five major elections, the Nazis held as many as 3,000
meetings in a single day. It had been customary in Germany for
political parties to campaign only during the last few weeks leading
up to an election, but the Nazis campaigned continuously.

Another novel feature of Nazi propaganda was its systematic and
almost scientific organization. Every region in Germany had its own
propaganda leader, all of whom were expected to follow the activities

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

111

of Nazi opponents with great care prior to the elimination of non-
Nazi parties in 1933. Quarrels and conflicts within a rival party were
quickly publicized, and all contradictions between their theory and
practice, and between their promises and fulfillment, were exposed in
the Nazi press. Party members used every opportunity to proselytize,
whether at work or in a streetcar. They were especially eager and suc¬
cessful at recruiting schoolteachers, who became part of an army of
Nazi public speakers who memorized speeches and rehearsed answers
in special speakers’ schools.

After arousing the interest of acquaintances through casual
conversation, and then perhaps giving them some party pamphlets
or newspapers to take home to read, recruiters would invite poten¬
tial converts to a meeting. Nazi party meetings differed radically
from those of other political parties. Hitler graphically expressed his
contempt for opposition party meetings when he wrote in Mein
Kampf that

they always made the same impression on me as in my youth the pre¬
scribed spoonful of cod-liver oil ... The speakers did everything they
could to preserve [a] peaceful mood. They spoke, or rather, as a rule,
they read speeches in the style of a witty newspaper article or of a
scientific treatise, avoided all strong words, and here and there threw
in some feeble professorial joke . 1

Nazi party meetings, by contrast, were anything but dull and far from
being mere occasions for speechmaking. The acoustics, background
music, flags and other symbols, and the timing of entrances and exits
were all designed to create the maximum possible emotional appeal.
Hitler wanted the meetings to be so colorful and popular that people
would actually pay to attend them. For example, at one of the party’s
annual rallies in Nuremberg, three gliders, in tight formation, landed
directly in front of Hitler. Consequently, the NSDAP was the first
party in the world and the only party of interwar Germany or Austria
to charge admission fees to its meetings.

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston, 1943), 480,481.

112

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

When the public began to tire of politics, especially in late 1932, the
Nazis devoted many of their meetings to almost pure entertainment,
including films (which in some small towns were still a novelty),
plays, acrobatic stunts, lotteries, dances, athletic contests, and even
recitals by children. In such ways they could prove their devotion to
German culture and also appeal to the broadest possible social spec¬
trum. So successful were the rallies that the price of admission not
only paid for the meetings themselves, but also covered some of the
Nazis’ other propaganda expenses such as newspapers and posters.
Hitler also noted later that the annual rallies in Nuremberg were good
preparations for war because the 4,000 special trains were a foretaste
of the requirements of mass military mobilization.

Nazi propaganda generally followed certain guidelines laid down
by Hitler in Mein Kampf. First, the message had to be simple and
repetitive so that even people with modest intellectual powers could
understand and remember it. Second, it had to be emotional. And
third, whenever possible the spoken word had to be favored over the
written word. In speaking to live audiences Hitler realized that he
could adjust his message and delivery in response to his listeners’
mood swings. A great deal more emotion could also be conveyed in
speaking than in writing.

Hitler himself carefully followed his own guidelines. Mein Kampf,
written at a time when he was not allowed to speak publicly, was his
only important publication. His speeches were not without faults.
They were too long, repetitious, chaotic, and full of contradictions.
But these drawbacks were overshadowed by the emotion and compel¬
ling conviction that they aroused. He seemed to know instinctively
how to tell every audience exactly what it wanted to hear. In this
respect Hitler was without peer. He was phenomenal, especially
because Germany was not a country with a great tradition of
oratory.

The task of Nazi propaganda became a good deal easier after the
party’s takeover in 1933. Within a few weeks there were no more
opposition newspapers or public speakers to challenge and contra¬
dict Nazi assertions and allegations. The government-owned and
-operated radio station was now a Nazi monopoly and was frequently

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

113

used by the Fiihrer. But most important, Hitler was now the
chancellor and could make policy, not merely talk about it. Like any
incumbent politician, his words now had to be taken seriously.

In March 1933, just six weeks after seizing power, Hitler established
the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by
Josef Goebbels, who had been in charge of Nazi propaganda during
the Kampfzeit. Many commentators have noted that Goebbels was
devoid of inner convictions. He simply knew how to display the con¬
victions of others. His cynicism, however, seems to have stopped
short of Hitler. Goebbels was one of the few Nazi leaders to commit
suicide, along with Hitler, in the final days of the Third Reich.

Goebbels was actually a more polished speaker than Hitler, and his
intellectual skills proved to be his most important asset. Unlike his
master, who thought that the importance of propaganda would
decline after the seizure of power, Goebbels believed that it would still
be necessary to mobilize support and maintain enthusiasm. Probably
his most important achievement was the creation of a semireligious
myth of an infallible German messiah, which forged an extraordinary
bond of loyalty between the masses and their Fiihrer.

Goebbels controlled the news by holding daily press conferences at
the Propaganda Ministry where editors were told what to write,
although they were given some leeway in how they wrote, so as to
avoid obvious conformity and monotony. Thus, German (and also
Italian) newspapers were manipulated, but unlike those of the Soviet
Union they were not nationalized. Goebbels’s ministry also demon¬
strated the close connection between propaganda and culture; after
September 1933 it included a Reich Chamber of Culture, which was
subdivided into chambers not only for the press, but also for broad¬
casting, literature, theater, music, film, and the fine arts. In his control
of German culture, Goebbels was guided by his personal conviction
that propaganda was most effective when insidious, that is, when its
message was concealed in popular entertainment. He knew that once
propaganda was recognized as such it lost its effectiveness. When he
occasionally departed from this ideal and used “hard sell” techniques,
the attempt usually failed miserably. The entertainment content of the
Nazis’ propaganda after their takeover of power can be seen in

114

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

elaborate ceremonies honoring Nazi martyrs, marching songs (which
replaced hymns), and festivals commemorating great Nazi events
(which replaced religious holidays).

Totalitarian Culture

Authoritarian states have always censored literature and the arts.
What was unique about these states was their attempt to create a new
culture, a kind of cultural autarky, that would match their attempted
economic self-sufficiency. Their success should not be exaggerated,
especially in the fascist states, which lasted only a generation or less.
For them especially, controlling the already existing culture was
probably just as important as creating a new one. We should also not
exaggerate the uniformity of culture in any one totalitarian state or
generalize between all three. Nowhere were controls over culture
imposed overnight, and no new culture ever emerged full blown all
at once.

Nevertheless, a few generalizations can be safely made. All the dic¬
tators rejected the idea of art for art’s sake. For them, culture was an
important handmaiden to the overall success of their regimes. All of
them, but especially Stalin and Hitler, favored size and scale, especially
in architecture, as a means of impressing the masses. Stalin, Hitler,
Lenin, and to a lesser extent Mussolini were suspicious of anything
modern, avant-garde, or abstract. Hitler described modern art as the
“mental excrement of diseased brains.” 2 By 1938, almost 16,000 works
of art, by foreign as well as German artists, deemed offensive by the
Nazis had been removed from German galleries and either sold abroad
or burned. The dictators liked art that was happy, optimistic, and
extroverted, not pessimistic, unpleasant, ambiguous, or philosophical.
Authors were supposed to use plain words and uncomplicated writing
styles. The dictators wanted culture to be inspired by heroic episodes
in their country’s past. In the Soviet Union the new style was called

2 Quoted in Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., ed., Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (New
Haven, CT, 1985), 309.

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

115

“socialist realism.” No similar term was ever coined in the fascist states -
Hitler sometimes talked about the necessity of art being “idealistic” -
but the fascists could easily have called their style “bourgeois realism”
because it was both middle class and representational. Artistic realism
in Germany and the Soviet Union by no means meant photographic
accuracy; rather, it meant a romanticized and idealized depiction of
what society should become in the utopian future. Paradoxically, total¬
itarian art was in a sense symbolic.

To root out artistic heresy, artists and literary figures of all kinds in
Germany and the Soviet Union were to belong to state-controlled
unions. Anyone not belonging to such an organization could not con¬
tinue to practice his or her craft, while those who did conform were
often handsomely rewarded. In Italy, artists merely had to pledge
their loyalty to the state, but not to any aesthetic dogma; nor did they
have to belong to professional unions.

The fascist states shared some similarities with each other that they
did not share with the Soviet Union. Mussolini and Hitler were both
fascinated by the brute strength of Roman architecture. Neither of
them promoted paintings or statues of industrial workers, a favorite
theme in Soviet art. Soviet artists were not interested in painting
pictures of peasants in folk costumes or even pictures with family
settings. Many pictures of Hitler Youth and Komsomol (Soviet) youth
groups could be found in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
All three dictatorships also favored pretentiousness, pomposity, and
neoclassicism. Stalin tore down national monuments and whole
neighborhoods to make way for his giant buildings, and Hitler was
prepared to destroy the center of Berlin in order to build monstrous
new government structures.

Historians have often credited Lenin, unjustifiably, with being the
most culturally tolerant of the totalitarian dictators. Publicly Lenin
declared himself incompetent to judge art. As recent research has
revealed, however, behind the scenes he did not hesitate to lay down
the law in artistic matters. He hated avant-garde art, closed the Bolshoi
Theater to ballet, and rarely attended plays, or if he did, often left
after the first act. The golden age of Soviet film took place during the
second half of the 1920s, after his death in 1924.

116

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

The comparative freedom of the late 1920s was to change drasti¬
cally under Stalin. In all aspects of culture there was a return to
patriotic themes, which reflected Stalin’s slogan of “Socialism in one
country.” It was also unthinkable that there be freedom of choice in
culture, but not in whether one wanted to join a collective farm or
work in a factory. Soviet society could not be partly free and partly
repressive. Stalin was particularly intolerant of writers. During his
dictatorship a thousand of them were executed, while another thou¬
sand languished in captivity. Much more to his taste was the work of
Maxim Gorky, who was put in charge of all Soviet culture. In speeches,
letters, and articles Gorky debunked what he called “legends”
concerning forced labor and terror, collectivization, and famine in the
Soviet Union.

Of the three totalitarian dictatorships, Fascist Italy made by far the
least impact on the continuity of its national culture. American mass
culture, in fact, was more influential in Italy during the Fascist era
than the Fascists themselves. Mussolini’s government was more
authoritarian than totalitarian in allowing all sorts of heterodox ideas
as long as they did not directly challenge the regime. Consequently,
few creative writers or artists felt compelled to emigrate or were forc¬
ibly deported. The conductor Arturo Toscanini was a rare exception.
However, a fairly large number of important intellectuals, such as the
well-known historian Gaetano Salvemini, were driven out of the
country or imprisoned for their opposition. Most intellectuals merely
censored themselves to avoid offending the authorities. Those who
did offend could find themselves isolated, but at least alive and
healthy. Roman Catholic culture remained untouched, in part, no
doubt, because the clergy frequently praised the Fascists’
antic ommunism.

There was no one Fascist style, but as in the other totalitarian states,
culture was supposed to be straightforward and useful. There were no
book burnings and only a modest purge of existing literature. But the
scores of literary competitions for poetry, history, and essays on
themes set by the Fascist party obviously had a political purpose.
Political articles in Fascist newspapers were thoroughly censored, but
cultural and artistic criticisms were lively and honest. As in Germany,

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

117

newspapers were allowed to retain their own style and character, so as
not to alienate their readers. Only after 1937 was Mussolini more
interested in positive indoctrination than mere negative censorship.
In that year a “Cremona Prize” was established for the “best Fascist
art,” and beginning in 1938 Italian art began to become more realistic.
The state-owned radio was thoroughly fascistized, but this was of
relatively little significance in a country that had so few receivers.

Film was a relatively new art form that all of the totalitarian states
attempted to exploit for propagandistic reasons. The fascist states
realized that hard-core propaganda films were not well received by
the general public. Consequently, only half a dozen or so were ever
made in Germany, and only three or four in Italy, even though
Mussolini actively supported the film industry. Films that made a
profit were more likely to win prizes than those that contained much
propaganda. However, Fascist themes were sometimes introduced
into Italian films a subtle way. Some depicted heroines whose main
purpose was to enhance the role of the male and the family. Other
films were historical dramas that glorified militarism. The vast
majority of them, especially in the 1930s, were escapist and senti¬
mental, as were those made in Germany (and the United States at the
time). Newsreels were a more promising means of indoctrination
than feature films because propaganda could easily be disguised as
news. In 1926 Italian theaters were required by law to show a newsreel
with each feature film.

Lenin immediately recognized the importance of the cinema, calling
it the art form of the twentieth century. It was a particularly useful
propaganda medium in a country where 60 percent of the population
was illiterate. It was during the New Economic Policy (NEP) that the
movies of Sergei Eisenstein drew international acclaim for their
novel techniques and many foreign films were imported. To eradi¬
cate nationalism, which was associated with the tsars, historical films
emphasized the class struggle. During the NEP, however, escapist films
from the United States were more popular than the innovative Soviet-
based work of Sergei Eisenstein.

Stalin, it almost goes without saying, made sure that Soviet movies
glorified the Bolshevik Revolution and the Five-Year Plans and

118

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

showed how happy all the nationalities of the Soviet Union were with
the new regime. He was especially interested in film and was well
aware of the mediums value as propaganda. Foreign films were no
longer imported, although this did not stop Stalin (like Hitler) from
enjoying westerns and detective stories. The second half of the 1930s
saw the emergence of musical comedies, perhaps because films that
attempted to persuade Soviet citizens to work harder had failed in
their mission. Stalin micromanaged the production of movies even to
the point of objecting to experimental camera-work. He made sure
that he previewed all Soviet films before they were released to the
public.

The Nazis’ impact on German culture was far swifter and more
profound than the Fascists’ impact on Italian culture. The large
number of radios, newspapers, and cinemas in Germany gave the
regime more media outlets than its counterpart in Communist Russia.
However, Nazi propagandists were not attempting to change the lives
of German citizens as much as their Soviet counterparts.

Literature was the first branch of the arts affected by the Nazis. As
early as April 1933, they had compiled a long blacklist of “leftist,”
democratic, and Jewish authors which included several famous
authors of the nineteenth century. Altogether 2,500 writers, including
Nobel Prize winners and writers of worldwide bestsellers, left the
country voluntarily or under duress, and were replaced by people
without international reputations. To the average German reader, this
mass emigration and censorship may not have seemed as serious as it
does today. Of the 12 best-selling authors, seven were actually sup¬
ported by the Nazis, three were tolerated, and just two were banned.
Many middle-class Germans also applauded the government’s swift
eradication of both written and pictorial pornography, as well as its
campaign against prostitution. The decrease in new high-quality
reading matter also appeared to be compensated by the increasing
popularity and availability of literary classics, a phenomenon that also
occurred in the Soviet Union.

The Nazis quickly purged all public libraries of books by Jewish
and left-wing authors. This campaign reached a climax with book¬
burning orgies in numerous university towns around the country in

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

119

May 1933. However, these events so outraged world public opinion
that Goebbels never permitted them to be repeated. Somewhat sur¬
prisingly, there was no pre-censorship of books; publishers generally
knew what they could and could not publish. If they guessed wrong,
they could have an entire edition confiscated by the Gestapo.

The theater in Nazi Germany was not as negatively affected by the
regime as literature, but the brilliance of the Weimar era disappeared
overnight. The works of almost all the famous playwrights and direc¬
tors of the Weimar period, many of whom were Jews, were banned by
the Nazis. However, the revival of prosperity and government sub¬
sidies to municipal theaters helped double the size of theater-going
audiences by 1942; no fewer than 2,000 plays premiered during the
Third Reich. Comedies were the most popular plays, but the regime
subsidized productions of the work of classical playwrights like
Goethe and Schiller to compensate for the lack of new dramas.

Basically the same trend took place in art, music, and film. Serious,
innovative, and intellectually challenging new works were stifled,
although the classics of music and literature were supported in all
three totalitarian states. In Germany, a newly formed Chamber of
Culture financially supported the many artists who had been
impoverished by the Depression, including the world-famous Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra. Prior to coming to power in 1933 the Nazis
had only the vaguest idea of what their policy toward music should
be, possibly because, apart from Hitler, few leading Nazis even enjoyed
music. This ambiguity, for the most part, continued once they were in
power, and the Nazis never did produce a new musical style. They
knew that they were opposed to jazz, which they associated with
American blacks. (The Soviet regime considered jazz to be “cultural
sabotage.”) However, jazz was already so popular in Germany that
they decided that “German” jazz was acceptable. Like Stalin, who did
not allow modern atonal music, the Nazis were also opposed to atonal
music, but could not agree on what music was atonal. Their only
certainty was that Jewish musicians should perform only before
Jewish audiences and that Jewish compositions should not be
performed in public. Fortunately for the international reputation of
the regime, most famous German musicians did not emigrate, and

120

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

the performance quality of German orchestras and opera houses
remained high. The Wagnerian music festival at Bayreuth (Bavaria),
too, was a beneficiary of Hitler’s subsidies and attendance.

The cinema industry, which was the second largest in the world after
Hollywood, became increasingly popular during the Third Reich.
Cinema attendance grew from 250 million in 1933 to one billion
in 1942. Contrary to conventional wisdom, German feature films
consisted mostly of light, sentimental, and popular works. As such they
were far closer in character to American movies of the same period
than to those produced in the Soviet Union. For example, of 1,097
feature films produced during the Third Reich, the vast majority were
love stories, comedies, musicals, detective stories, and mountaineering
films, the latter being a specialty of the Third Reich. Only one in 20
films was overtly political, and even that ratio declined after the Battle
of Stalingrad. Surprisingly, only a handful of hard-core anti-Semitic
films were produced. The most famous of these, Jiid Suss, which was the
story of a blonde Nordic girl raped by a Jewish brute, was poorly
received in Germany, except by ardent party members, but it broke all
box-office records when it was shown in occupied France in 1941.

As in Italy, newsreels and documentaries were considered by the
regime to be an important outlet for propaganda, but they remained
popular only as long as they were able to show Nazi domestic
successes and military victories. Needless to say, the newsreels did
not show book burnings, pogroms, concentration camps, steriliza¬
tion, or euthanasia. Beginning in 1938, all of Germany’s cinemas were
required to show the latest newsreels, which during the war increased
to 30 minutes in length.

The antimodern bias of the Nazis was less apparent in architecture
than in other cultural fields. They did not tear down any modern
buildings and there was no uniform Nazi style. Radical architects
were not terrorized, but they were also not given commissions. New
buildings were constructed in a variety of styles reflecting the prefer¬
ences of local Nazi leaders. Hitler insisted only that Nazi architecture
be heroic, meaning monumental in scale. “Monumental” is hardly an
adequate word to describe the gargantuan buildings Hitler had his pet
architect, Albert Speer, design for the center of Berlin and elsewhere.

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

121

Speer’s “Peoples Hall,” for example, would have held 200,000 people,
far more than any other building in the world. Its dome would have
been seven times larger than St Peter’s in Rome. Fortunately, most of
these proposed buildings were never built.

The fascist regimes were not only interested in controlling culture
but also in making it readily available to the masses. The Nazis
increased the number of state-run libraries from 6,000 in 1933 to
25,000 at the height of the war. They also provided soldiers with 45,000
front-line libraries, which held 43 million books donated by civilians.
More novel were the leisure-time organizations created by both fascist
regimes, which were arguably their most popular institutions.

The Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND, or “After Work”) was
Fascist Italy’s largest and most active recreational organization for
adults, its membership rising from under 300,000 in 1926 to 5 million
in 1940. It was about evenly divided between people who considered
themselves lower middle class and those who were farmers or
blue-collar workers. It was responsible for operating and maintaining
over 11,000 sporting grounds, over 6,400 libraries, nearly 800 movie
houses, more than 1,200 theaters, and well over 2,000 orchestras. By
the late 1930s, every town and village throughout the country had a
Dopolavoro clubhouse replete with a small library and a radio, and
often athletic equipment, auditoriums for films and plays, and some¬
times even a small travel agency. All the activities were provided at a
reduced rate, including a 50 percent discount on train fares for travel
within Italy. Membership was voluntary and the clubs’ activities were
relatively nonpolitical - which may well have been the cause of the
organization’s popularity. However, because of the poor quality of its
plays and concerts, the Dopolavoro was looked down on by the mid¬
dle class, even though these performances were probably the most
successful part of the OND. For children there were over 5,800 camp¬
sites with an annual enrollment of nearly 1 million.

Much more bourgeois was Germany’s Kraft durch Freude (KdF, or
“Strength through Joy”). It too was enormously popular, growing from
9 million participants in 1934 to 55 million five years later, no doubt in
part because it provided a much greater variety of activities than
Dopolavoro. As its name implied, the “Strength through Joy” program

122

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

was supposed to increase productivity by enhancing the work
environment, thus refreshing workers. It was an interesting idea,
although there is no evidence that it worked in the way intended. It
provided various fringe benefits for its members, including subsidized
theater performances, concerts - some of them staged in factories - art
exhibitions, sports and hiking groups, social and folk dancing, and
films and adult education courses. It also owned enterprises, including
a Volkswagen factory and a dozen snow-white seagoing ships which
took members on vacation cruises to Spain’s Mediterranean islands
and Portugal’s Madeira islands in the Atlantic along with Italy, Istanbul,
the Norwegian fjords, and Finland. It was no coincidence that the
Nazis regarded all of these destinations as actual or possible allies of
Germany. With only one class instead of the customary three classes
of cabins, KdF ships were designed to help build the classless
Volksgemeinschaft, although in reality only wealthier Germans could
afford the cruises. While it undoubtedly produced some goodwill for
the regime, as with its Italian counterpart, the main reason for its
popularity was because it was relatively free of political pressure.

Nothing exactly comparable to Kraft durch Freude or Dopolavoro
existed in the Soviet Union. However, youth organizations (see below)
organized camping trips and took over the confiscated palaces and
mansions of the nobility and upper bourgeoisie for various activities
including the showing of movies. As for adults, labor unions subsi¬
dized tickets for theater, opera, and ballet performances; provided
vacation rest homes; and arranged vacations, for example, to the
Black Sea. They also provided literacy classes, elementary and
secondary education classes at factories, and on-site child-care centers.
Consequently, one way or another, the Communist party directly
controlled all athletic and social activities in the Soviet Union.

Soviet Education

In the totalitarian states education was merely another branch of
propaganda, and a very effective one at that. All states try to instill
a love of one’s country and its institutions in their people, and

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

123

democracies are no exception. It is doubtful whether any state could
function without the glue provided by patriotism. Super-patriotic
organizations in democratic states have even tried to make certain
courses instruments of propagandistic indoctrination. The difference
between these totalitarian states and democracies in their educational
policies is therefore at least partly one of degree. In the former,
teachers and students were constantly under government pressure.
Teachers were forced to join party organizations, and there was no
such thing as tenure. As in other aspects of totalitarian culture, the
schools were not immediately transformed. Not all teachers could
be replaced by party members overnight, and new and politically
correct textbooks required years to write and publish.

In all three states there was a strong emphasis on political indoctri¬
nation. Nazi Germany also stressed practical subjects and physical
education as a preparation for war. Teachers and university professors
in all three states were brought under state control through
professional organizations. Untrustworthy teachers were dismissed.
In all three states universities lost their autonomy and were subjected
to rigid bureaucratic control. Freedom of research was also impeded
in all three states though not always in the same way. The dictator¬
ships were especially interested in controlling political subjects like
history and political science, and less interested in influencing the
natural sciences like mathematics, physics, and chemistry; even here,
however, there were exceptions. Both Stalin and Hitler imposed their
views on the field of biology.

During the 1920s the Soviet Union was an exception to some of the
above generalizations. The spirit of revolt and experimentation that
existed in the culture of the NEP could also be found in the country’s
educational system. The authority of teachers - who had been trained
in the tsarist period - was minimized; homework and examinations
were abolished; and traditional subjects were neglected. Soviet educa¬
tors consciously borrowed techniques from abroad. Pupils were
largely expected to acquire an education while participating in society.

All this changed with the introduction of Stalinism in the early
1930s. Schools were now required to participate in the conversion of
a technologically and culturally backward society into a modern one.

124

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

Academic ranks were restored in 1932 and salaries for teachers raised.
Strict classroom discipline and respect for teachers was restored, as
was mass recitation. School children wore uniforms - jumpers for
girls and military-style outfits for boys - to make them feel more like
members of a group than like individuals. Textbooks were introduced
and a decree of February 1933 stipulated that they all had to be
approved by the Commissariat of Education. Traditional subjects like
history and literature reappeared. Pupils were expected to master
foreign languages, mathematics, and science. More and more the
schools began to resemble their tsarist predecessors. The educational
system was intended to train young people for positions in the
economic, social, political, and cultural life of the state.

Under Stalin, real progress was made in eliminating illiteracy in
the Soviet Union, but no more so than in the Balkan states during the
same period. In order to make the country more modern, that is,
more industrial and technological, the educational system had to be
greatly expanded. During the 1930s seven years of schooling were
required of all children in the Russian Republic and in the cities of
the other republics of the USSR. Starting in 1935-6, even children of
the former bourgeoisie had free access to education including uni¬
versities. School attendance increased from 7.8 million in 1914 to 32
million in 1939. Adult illiterates had their workdays reduced by two
hours with no loss of pay if they attended school. As a consequence,
illiteracy was reduced from 50 percent in 1927 to 19 percent on the
eve of World War II. Education was free at all levels. The most
advanced students even received living expenses, but in exchange
had to serve five years (later reduced to three) in areas assigned by
the government. By 1940 there were seven times as many specialists
with higher education in the Soviet Union than there had been in
1913 (see Plate 19). Women especially benefited from their increased
access to higher education. According to the census of 1939, they
held 44 percent of the posts at universities in the fields of education,
science, and art. These achievements, however, were offset by low
pay and insufficient child-care services.

While Stalin may have thought he was merely training specialists
for slots in the Soviet economy, he was unknowingly laying the

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

125

foundations for his regime’s destruction. It seems reasonable to
assume that uneducated people are usually much more in awe of
authority than educated people, and are much easier to command
than those with advanced degrees. Even those who have been trained
in narrow specialties are more likely to ask questions and less likely to
be satisfied with simplistic answers. Essentially this was the evolution
that occurred in the Soviet Union between the 1930s and the 1980s.
Stalin did his best to retard the process, however, by being the supreme
arbiter on all matters involving the arts and sciences and by suppress¬
ing the plurality of opinions which is the heart and soul of scientific
progress. Because of this, the Soviet Union fell further and further
behind the West scientifically, especially in nonmilitary fields.

Education in the Fascist States

In some ways education in the fascist states resembled that of the
Soviet Union in the 1930s. Italy, as mentioned, also had an illiteracy
problem, albeit less serious than the Soviet Union’s. New schools were
built in Italy and old ones improved; the minimum school-leaving
age was raised from 12 to 14, and attendance was far more strictly
enforced than earlier. Consequently, state expenditures on schools
increased by 50 percent. State-approved textbooks were introduced in
1929. Children were taught that they owed the same loyalty to Fascism
as they did to God. Also in 1929, secondary school teachers were
forced to take a loyalty oath. The same demand was made of uni¬
versity professors in 1933, a demand supported by Pope Pius XI. Of
approximately 1,250 professors, only 11 refused to comply. After 1933
teachers at all levels had to be members of the Fascist party.

In general, however, Italian schools and universities were far less
affected by totalitarianism than the educational systems of the Soviet
Union or Nazi Germany. It is true that Mussolini’s first minister of
education, the philosopher Giovanni Gentile, who served between
1922 and 1924, said that the educational system should inculcate
Italian young people with the ideology of the Fascist state including
obedience and respect for authority. However (in contrast to his

126

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

counterparts in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union) he catered for
the traditional preferences of the bourgeoisie by putting less emphasis
on the sciences and even more on Italian literature and history, as well
as Latin, than there had been in the pre-Fascist era.

Indoctrination in Fascist principles became intense only after 1929
and textbooks did not become a state monopoly until 1936. Only in
the late 1930s, thanks to the reforms of Giuseppe Bottai, would
physical fitness and manual work be emphasized in an effort to unite
the school experience with “real world” experiences. Even though the
basic subject matter for many years remained much the same, the
treatment did not. History textbooks showed the divine civilizing
mission of Italy throughout history. Ancient history was virtually
synonymous with ancient Roman history. The rebirth of Italian
nationalism in the mid nineteenth century, known as the Risorgimento,
became a mere prelude to Fascist Italy. Nevertheless, the attempt to
indoctrinate chauvinism, militarism, and imperialism frequently
remained superficial at best. Italian homes remained more important
than schools as places where morals and values were taught. Special
leadership schools for promising young men between the ages of 23
and 28 were established in 1940, but their inauguration coincided
with Italy’s entry into World War II, which drew away some of the
best candidates.

The one Fascist educational policy that made a big, negative,
difference was the introduction of anti-Semitism in 1938. About 200
professors and teachers lost their jobs as a consequence, a loss that
was significant at university level because about 10 percent of all pro¬
fessors were of Jewish origin. Not only did this new policy harm the
universities, but it also proved to be extremely unpopular with the
general public.

The Nazis’ impact on the educational system of Germany was far
more immediate, profound, and negative. The curriculum was made
more practical, reflecting Hitler’s anti-intellectualism. History at
every level was thoroughly Nazified; Jews were blamed for every
disaster in German history. German geography and German culture
were stressed, as were specifically Nazi areas of interest such as racial
biology and population policy. A great deal of time was devoted to

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

127

physical education as a means of building character and discipline.
Character building was regarded as more important than book
learning because it created a willingness for service and obedience to
the Volk and the Fiihrer. Physical strength was thought to impart
confidence and a sense of superiority, as well as be a means of
improving the health and size of the German population. The reshap¬
ing of the curriculum, however, varied considerably from place to
place, depending on individual teachers and principals; for example,
until March 1938 the censorship of textbooks was haphazard. But
Nazification was aided by the fact that many teachers were already
members of the party before Hitler’s rise to power.

German universities were much more profoundly affected by anti-
Semitism than their Italian counterparts. There were around 550,000
Jews in Germany in 1933, compared to just 50,000 thoroughly assim¬
ilated Jews in Italy, a country with almost no anti-Semitic tradition.
Eighteen percent of the faculty was dismissed from German univer¬
sities. Of these, a third were Jews who were dismissed on strictly racial
grounds. But it would be safe to assume that there were many Jews
among the 56 percent who were dismissed for political reasons.
Whereas 11 Italian professors lost their jobs when they refused to take
the loyalty oath, 100 times that number lost their academic jobs in
Germany. The professors who were retained were required to belong
to the National Socialist Association of University Lecturers.
Academic work in Germany was also disrupted by the constant
presence of informers both within the student body and in the
faculty.

The Nazi regime also reduced, albeit only temporarily, the number
of university students, especially young women, partly to cut
unemployment among professionally trained people and partly
because of its antifeminist stance. Enrollment at German universities
shrank from nearly 128,000 in 1933 to 51,000 in 1938, including just
6,300 women, although some of this decline was due to the very low
birth rate during World War I. Fifteen times as many students per
capita attended American universities at this time. Even in secondary
schools the number of girls declined from 437,000 in 1926 to 205,000
in 1937. After 1938, however, the shortage of specialists needed for

128

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

war production and the conscription of young men broke down the
Nazi resistance to higher education for women, and the number of
German students rose to 82,500 in 1944, of whom nearly half were
women.

The Nazis’ influence on different academic disciplines varied. The
teaching of the social sciences and economics was of great concern to
the regime because of their political implications. Biology was thor¬
oughly Nazified by the integration of racial, and racist, theories. The
quality of psychology and physics courses was badly affected simply
because so many brilliant Jewish professors had worked in these areas.
Medical science, however, does not appear to have been seriously
hampered; more medical journals were published in Germany bet¬
ween 1933 and 1937 than in any other country, which contained few
or no references to broader political events. The practice of medicine,
as opposed to medical research, is another story altogether, as will be
seen in Chapter 6.

Youth Groups

The totalitarian states were not content to leave the political indoctri¬
nation of young people to their educational systems alone. To some
extent they regarded the older generation, which had grown to matu¬
rity and had acquired their values during the old regime, as beyond
redemption. Those in power saw themselves as movers of the young
and as bold and daring in contrast to the old and fossilized. The youn¬
gest generation, moreover, was malleable, its values still very much in
flux. If young people could be dressed in uniforms, engaged in enjoy¬
able activities, and indoctrinated into the party’s ideology, they could
be converted to the cause, and were likely to pass their convictions on
to the next generation and hence perpetuate the regime. At least in
their early years, all three totalitarian parties had exceptionally young
memberships.

In Russia, a Communist League of Youth (Komsomol), for 15- to
23-year-olds, was established in Petrograd as early as 1917. It spon¬
sored and oversaw many sporting, cultural, and social activities.

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

129

Stalin exploited the idealism and romanticism of the early movement
by having the Komsomol play a vital role in the First Five-Year Plan,
and especially in the collectivization campaign. By 1939 it had 9 mil¬
lion members in its three subdivisions. The youngest children
belonged to the Little Octobrists who sang patriotic songs and went
on excursions to monasteries, where they were told about the
depravity of religion. At the age of nine they graduated to the Young
Pioneers, who played war games and helped illiterate people of all
ages learn to read. They also engaged in sports and went on camping
trips where campfire talks included stories about Lenin’s life and
anecdotes about the history of the revolutionary movement. The old¬
est Komsomol members helped organize demonstrations to promote
Stalin’s policies. The best of the Komsomol’s graduates were invited to
join the Communist party: during Stalin’s time it was not good for
one’s health to refuse the invitation. The entire youth organization
was modeled on the party’s, with the same regional and district
network.

The Italian effort to organize youth was handicapped by the lack of
youth groups in the Liberal era. The Fascist equivalent of the
Komsomol was the Opera Nazionale Balilla (ONB), which included,
in theory at least, children of all classes and both sexes between the
ages of 6 and 18. In practice, however, relatively few children from
peasant or working-class families belonged to the ONB. Founded in
1926, but with antecedents dating back to 1922, it avoided overt
political indoctrination. More important was simply submerging
oneself in a mass organization that built character, that is, obedience
to authority. Most of the ONB’s members enjoyed getting together in
their uniforms, shouting slogans, and sharing a prescribed patriotic
ritual. Children who were kept out of the organization by anti-Fascist
parents often felt deprived and were subjected to discrimination in
school and when they started their careers.

One area in which the ONB enjoyed considerable success was in
making young Italians more sports-minded. Calisthenics and mass
gymnastic exercises of identically dressed young people singing
Fascist songs were intended to demonstrate the unity, order, and force
that Fascism had created. Mussolini was the first dictator to use

130

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

international athletic competitions to promote his regime. In so doing
he provided a model imitated by Nazi Germany in 1936 and by the
Soviet Union and Communist East Germany after World War II. The
Fascists’ backing of elite athletes ostensibly paid off when Italy fin¬
ished second and fourth in the overall results of the Olympic Games
of 1932 and 1936. Italian teams also did well in soccer, wining two
World Cups in 1934 and 1938, as well as the gold medal in the Berlin
Olympics of 1936. Italian national pride soared.

Probably no totalitarian movement was more successful at cap¬
turing the fanatical support of young people from the very beginning
than the Nazis (see Plate 11). Young people distributed Nazi newspa¬
pers and leaflets free of charge when other political parties had to pay
for these services. By July 1931, 18 months before Hitler came to
power, the League of German Students, an association of university
students in Germany and Austria, already had a Nazi majority and
leadership.

Unlike the Fascists, the Nazis could build on a youth movement
that dated back to about 1810. From the beginning it was national¬
istic, and after 1890 it also became anti-Semitic. At that time a group
called the Wandervogel (literally, “wandering birds”) rebelled against
the Industrial Revolution by romanticizing the beauty of nature as
opposed to the ugliness of big cities where Jews were concentrated.
Although the Hitler fugend (HJ, or “Hitler Youth”) was not founded
until 1926, Nazi youth groups had existed since 1922. Young people
between the ages of 10 and 18 were eligible to join the HJ. Children
under 14 were assigned to the fungvolk if they were boys and the
Jungmadel if they were girls. Teenage girls belonged to the Bund
Deutscher Madel (BDM, or “League of German Girls”).

The Nazis were ingenious at exploiting the enthusiasm and sense of
adventure of young people. The young were provided with duties, free
from parental supervision, which gave them a sense of importance
and were sheer pleasure for them. The HJ, unlike the ONB in Italy,
was quite successful in breaking down social and intellectual distinc¬
tions between the classes. It was also democratic in that it gave every
child, regardless of family background, an opportunity for advance¬
ment within the organization. Between 1933 and 1936, membership

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

131

in the various youth groups grew from 1 to 5 million as the Nazis
absorbed non-Nazi youth groups which by 1936 were eliminated
altogether. By early 1939, membership of Nazi youth groups had
reached 8.7 million and became fully compulsory for every healthy
boy (but not girl) over the age of nine; 82 percent of all boys belonged
to the HJ or to one of its affiliate organizations.

The HJ would now be regarded as very sexist. Boys were to develop
“manliness” through exercise, competitive sports, and premilitary
training; girls, in their separate organizations, were to learn how to
become good wives and mothers. They were discouraged from using
makeup because it conflicted with the Nazis’ concept of natural Aryan
beauty. Teachers and intellectuals, toward whom the HJ displayed an
undisguised hostility, as well as parents, were less enthusiastic about
the program than the young people themselves. The former resented
their diminished authority and classroom time lost through HJ
activities, such as celebrating Hitlers birthday and taking part in the
charitable Winter Aid campaign and the Harvest Festival.

In two areas the HJ was undoubtedly successful: athletics and
premilitary training. No doubt as a result of the HJ’s stress on physical
fitness, Germany did exceedingly well in the Summer and Winter
Olympic Games held in Berlin and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1936,
even though Hitler had for a long time opposed the hosting of inter¬
national sporting events in Germany because they might include Jews
and blacks. He changed his mind, however, when Germany won a
total of 89 medals in 1936, compared to only 56 medals for the sec¬
ond-placed US delegation. The Games, which were the first to be
broadcast live internationally over the radio, raised the prestige of
Nazi Germany to unprecedented levels. The physical fitness program
promoted by the HJ took up four hours during the week and three
entire weekends a month. Together with war games, which included
the use of lethal weapons and map reading, the HJ helped to make the
German army the best trained in the world when World War II began.
The Hitler Youth also served as an indispensable recruiting ground
for the SS.

Of the three totalitarian youth groups, the HJ appears to have been
by far the most successful in achieving the goals its party set for it.

132

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

No other demographic group remained as loyal to Hitler to the bitter
end as the young people. The flag raisings, parades, hikes, camping
excursions, and war games all seem to have made an indelible
impression on young Germans, especially the youngest among them.
Whereas 80 percent of the general population supported Hitler
before Stalingrad, 95 percent of the youth did so after Stalingrad.
This is not to suggest that there was no opposition to the Nazis
among the young. German youth had originally been attracted to the
Nazi party because it was a protest movement. By the mid-1930s the
HJ had become part of the new establishment, and its mammoth
structure and regimentation were resented by a minority of young
people. In protest, some from working-class families joined the
Edelweiss Pirates and went hiking, cycling, or hitchhiking on their
own in defiance of wartime travel bans. Upper middle-class young
people joined the antipolitical Swing Youth, whose members out¬
raged adults by listening to “decadent” jazz and dancing the jitterbug.
During World War II some of the most courageous opposition to the
Nazis was provided by a group of university students in Munich
called the White Rose, whose members paid for their idealism with
their lives.

The loyalty of young Germans to Hitler may simply have been a
result of the Third Reich lasting only 12 years, which did not give
them enough time to become disillusioned. In Italy, young people
began to realize after 1936 - 14 years after Mussolini had come to
power - that the regime had not lived up to its own promises. They
were especially opposed to the military alliance with Germany. The
Fascists were simply unable to create a new ideological consciousness
among the young. In Russia, the shocking revelation in 1956 by
General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev about the crimes of Stalin con¬
tributed to an already growing disillusionment among the younger
generation, which became increasingly cynical about the promises of
imminent prosperity made by the regime’s (now) elderly leaders.
They were also bored by the routine of the Komsomol. By the 1980s
the younger generation was almost completely lost to the regime, in
stark contrast to the 1920s and 1930s.

Propaganda, Culture, and Education

133

The totalitarian states all achieved some successes in the areas of
propaganda, culture, and education. Their propaganda machines
certainly succeeded in creating cults of personality for the dictators
whose popularity remained far higher than that of their parties. The
regimes also managed to spread culture and education to the masses,
who had often been neglected by the old pre-totalitarian governments.
Under the totalitarian dictators, illiteracy was virtually eliminated in
Russia and Italy. Young people, for a time at least, were thoroughly
indoctrinated by the new dogmas in youth groups and became more
athletically inclined. However, the most popular forms of entertain¬
ment of the totalitarian parties were precisely those films and plays
with little or no political content. The most popular organizations,
like Dopolavoro and Kraft durch Freude, were voluntary and almost
completely nonpolitical.

As in so many other aspects of totalitarianism, the failures outnum¬
bered the successes even if the latter were not always immediately
apparent. In the long run, propaganda was only as successful as the
achievements it hoped to advertise. It could not convince Italians that
the regime was worth defending in World War II; it could not convince
Germans that Germany was winning a war it was actually losing; and
it could not convince Soviet citizens that they were prosperous. Young
people were easier to fool, but given time even even they began to
realize that they had been betrayed. In the name of culture and edu¬
cation, the totalitarian states, especially Russia and Germany,
harassed, deported, and killed some of their most creative people -
much to the benefit of other countries, especially the United States.
Although educational levels were raised in Russia and Italy, educated
people were the most likely to question the dogmas of the regimes
that had educated them.

Family Values and Health

... a bizarre mixture of enlightenment and brutality.

The attitudes toward women and the family, and even health, in total¬
itarian society, as with economics and a good many other subjects,
were initially very different in the fascist states from those in the
Soviet Union. The Communists believed that the Bolshevik
Revolution and the Soviet Union represented a sharp break with the
bourgeois past, with its glorification of private property and subordi¬
nation of women. Communist ideology led to the conclusion that
when private property was abolished, men and women would own
everything in common and all people would therefore be free and
equal. Women would be emancipated from the very restricted role
they had played, not only within the family but also within society as
a whole.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

Family Values and Health

135

The Conservative Trend in Values

Fascist ideology, at least in its more mature stages, purported to
defend traditional values, including the role of women, religion, and
the family against the (modern) challenges of communism and liber¬
alism. Western civilization, they claimed, had been undermined by
the Industrial Revolution, which had given birth to Marxism and
atheism and threatened to destroy the family by luring women out of
the household and into traditionally “male” jobs in factories and
offices. They also believed, at least in Germany, that the Industrial
Revolution had undermined health by polluting the air and water and
that modern medicine as practiced by Jews, with its emphasis on
drugs, was ineffective in restoring the health of the nations people.

Prior to the Russian Revolution, and during Lenin’s New Economic
Policy, the Communists deprecated the family and associated it with
private property and the bourgeoisie. The early Bolsheviks had often led
a bohemian existence and had sometimes not bothered to marry their
live-in partners. They expected the family to wither away along with the
state. Once in power they saw to it that divorce was made easy and that
incest, bigamy, adultery, and homosexuality were all decriminalized.
After seizing power, they did not at first perceive the importance of
stable personal relations within a bureaucratic structure. Women were
fully emancipated during the NEP and were allowed to enter all profes¬
sions. Divorce, birth control, and abortion were all easily obtained.

Stalin, however, could not tolerate a libertine attitude toward such
a basic institution as the family. Just as he could not allow freedom in
cultural affairs to exist at the same time as he was applying dictatorial
controls over the economy, so too he felt that conservative family
values had to be restored to bring about a disciplined Soviet society.
Oddly enough, then, the left-wing ideology of Communism began
more and more to resemble the ultraconservative values of the fascists
during the 1930s.

The conservative thrust of totalitarian family values in the 1920s
and 1930s was not as unusual as one might suppose. Even in noncom¬
munist Europe and North America the tidal wave of feminism, which
had reached its peak shortly after the end of World War I, had already

136

Family Values and Health

begun to ebb well before the end of the roaring twenties. The war
broke down the resistance of both men and women to female suffrage
throughout most countries in western, central, and northern Europe
as well as in North America. For politicians who had previously
opposed women’s suffrage, it became a convenient fiction to say that
it was a war measure and a reward for patriotic service. Consequently,
women (over 30) won the vote in Britain in 1918; in Germany it was
written into the Weimar constitution in 1919; and in the United States
the Nineteenth Amendment, which prohibits any US citizen from
being denied a vote on the basis of sex, was approved in 1920. In Italy
and France, however, women did not gain the right to vote.

Far from energizing the women’s rights movement, the winning of
the franchise was a major setback. Members of the movement - which
had by no means included all women to begin with - could agree on
little except the franchise. With it now safely won, there were no more
truly unifying goals. Men who had grudgingly agreed to let women
vote dug in their heels when it came to other issues such as jobs and
wages. After World War I, returning veterans wanted their old jobs
back, and politicians, especially in totalitarian parties, were eager to
curry their favor. By 1921 there were actually fewer women working
outside the home in Great Britain - and most of the other former
belligerent countries - than a decade earlier. The demand for equal pay
for equal work failed everywhere. Even the enrollment of women in
universities declined. In the United States, a higher percentage of
women attended colleges and universities in the 1920s than in the
1950s. The coming of the Great Depression only accelerated this reac¬
tionary trend on both sides of the Atlantic, as more and more men in all
the industrialized countries demanded that women give up their jobs to
unemployed men, especially if they had husbands who were employed.

Soviet Women: The Mixed Blessings
of Emancipation

The early Bolsheviks committed themselves to a thorough program of
women’s emancipation, and a number of female party members were
ready to enact their program when they came to power in 1917.

Family Values and Health

137

Religious marriages were no longer deemed necessary. The first
Soviet constitution of 1918 gave women full political equality and
legalized divorce. Either spouse could demand a divorce and no
grounds were necessary for its approval. Legislation provided for
maternity pay and child-care facilities, as advocated by Marx and
Engels. The status of illegitimacy was eliminated. The principle of
equal pay for equal work was also established in law. In 1920 the
Soviet Union became the first country in the world where abortions
were not only legal but also free. The Zhenotdel, or Women’s
Department of the Soviet government, made great contributions to
women’s causes, especially in the areas of health issues and literacy,
before it was suppressed by Stalin in 1930. Soviet women were espe¬
cially prominent in the arts, where their radical abstract paintings and
posters broke dramatically with artistic conventions. Meanwhile, the
Soviet government was expanding educational opportunities, as well
as job-training programs, for women. The tsarist government had
finally opened higher education to women during World War I.
However, it was the Bolsheviks who freed education from gender,
class, ethnic, and linguistic restrictions. The Soviets even went so far
as to mandate that at least 30 percent of the students at institutions of
higher education had to be women, a rule that was far more egali¬
tarian than anything existing in other European countries at the time.

However, it was easier to enact laws than to have them realized in
practice. The force of tradition among both men and women often
made the laws a dead letter, especially on the matter of equal pay for
equal work. Moreover, Lenin and other early Bolsheviks never fully
trusted women, especially women from the peasantry and working
class who were assumed to be religious and hostile to trade unions
and political parties. They feared that the new laws could facilitate
personal irresponsibility and marital instability, which they believed
were responsible for the rising divorce rate. Most Bolsheviks wanted
men to lead and women to stay at home or devote themselves to more
traditional “women’s work.”

Not all of the changes in marriage laws were necessarily enthusias¬
tically received by women, or even worked in the way the government
had anticipated. Women were reluctant to give up church weddings.
Many women (and some men) were opposed to liberalized divorce

138

Family Values and Health

because it did not require either fathers or the state to provide child
support. Peasant women resented being excluded from maternity
benefits. Where maternity benefits did exist during the NEP,
employers often fired women and replaced them with men so that
they did not have to assist pregnant women and nursing mothers.

Free and easily obtainable abortions led to even more serious con¬
sequences. By the 1930s there were twice as many abortions as live
births. Abortions, in fact, were the most common means of birth
control. So far did the birth rate drop that abortions were outlawed in
1936 in order to increase the birth rate. Exceptions were made only
for women suffering from a physical or mental disease. Physicians
performing illegal abortions could face one to three years in prison.
However, the prohibition, which was opposed by women, only led to
a large number of illegal and dangerous abortions.

After Stalin’s emergence in 1928 as the dictator of both the
Communist party and the state, women almost vanished from the
higher levels of the state and party bureaucracy, but they did not stay
at home. Stalins ascendancy marked the end of both the relative
freedom of the NEP and progress in women’s rights. He silenced the
discussion about women’s rights by simply declaring that the problem
had been solved. Not only Stalin, but most other Communist leaders
as well, were hostile to the very idea of women’s organizations. They
often implied, especially in Muslim areas, that Zhenotdel workers
were either immoral or incompetent. Only a minority were ever served
by women’s organizations and even fewer women joined the party.

During Stalin’s dictatorship and until the glasnost (openness) policy
of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, the official Soviet view
was that Stalin was the champion of the family. In order to promote
marriage, he revoked the right to discuss lesbianism and homosexu¬
ality in 1933. Male homosexuality became a crime punishable by five
to eight years’ imprisonment, a law that remained in force into the
1980s. Another law of 1936 attempted to discourage divorce - which
had reached 37 percent in Moscow in 1934 - by making it so expensive
that it became unaffordable for most. Second or subsequent divorces
were three to six times as expensive as a first divorce. The Russian
traditional cult of motherhood was reinforced, and divorce further

Family Values and Health

139

discouraged in 1936 when child-support payments from divorced
fathers were increased. The latter had to pay a quarter of their wages
to support one child and half of it to support three or more children.
Women having five or more children were rewarded with prizes and
medals. In 1944 cash bonuses were given to women having two or
more children, with the amount increasing with each new baby; 10
children earned one the title of “Heroine Mother.”

Neither the emancipation laws, nor those that attempted to rein¬
force the nuclear family, benefited women or even worked as intended.
The number of job-holding women rose from 3 million in 1928 to
over 13 million in 1940. By 1945 they constituted 56 percent of the
workforce, probably the highest in the world. But as in other coun¬
tries, both fascist and democratic, nearly all women held jobs that
were either menial or low-paying or both. By the end of the 1930s,
women constituted 57 percent of all farm workers, but held just 3 per¬
cent of the managerial positions on the collectivized farms. Very few
leading positions in the party were filled by women. They did become
the majority of the country’s teachers and physicians, but these posi¬
tions were very poorly paid. Moreover, their greater presence in the
workplace did nothing to reduce their responsibilities at home, where
Russian husbands remained notoriously stubborn about not sharing
household chores. The laws against divorce and legalized abortion
simply meant that couples separated informally and women were
forced to have illegal abortions. Consequently, the birth rate remained
relatively low. Finally, Stalins effort to strengthen the family was
undermined by his extremely suspicious character. Children’s news¬
papers urged their readers to spy on their parents and to report any
questionable activities to the authorities.

At best, we can say that the Bolshevik Revolution was a mixed blessing
for Russian women. They were able to enter professions that had
previously been closed to them. Like their male counterparts, their
educational opportunities improved. They were honored as mothers
and, if divorced, they were assured of child-care payments. However, by
the end of the interwar period they found themselves overworked and
underpaid. Their new political “rights,” such as the right to vote, were
meaningless because the elections themselves were meaningless.

140

Family Values and Health

Fascist Italy: The Failure of Antifeminism

The same picture of mixed blessings can be painted for the women of
Fascist Italy. Italy was by no means in the forefront of the women’s
rights movement prior to World War I. A high rate of illiteracy, low
civic participation, the prevalence of small towns and villages where
traditional paternalistic values remained strong, and slow economic
growth all worked to retard the feminist movement. Traditional
patriarchal values were strongest in southern Italy, especially Sicily,
where it was taboo for women even to appear in public.

Although the Fascist program of 1919-20 called for female suffrage
and social equality, Mussolini soon reversed his position on women’s
rights - as indeed he did about almost everything. This about-face is
not surprising, because Mussolini regarded women as being intellec¬
tually, physically, and morally inferior to men. Faithful wives would,
in any case, vote in the same way as their husbands. It soon became
apparent to the Duce that to win over veterans he would have to
promise them jobs in preference to women. Women had entered the
job market when men had gone off to fight between the beginning of
the war with the Ottoman Empire in 1911 and the end of World War
I in 1918. Women did not merely lose jobs after the Fascist takeover;
a law enacted in 1927 decreed that women’s salaries could be only half
that of their male counterparts.

Mussolini’s imperialistic goals also required a large population
and an increased birth rate. This policy inevitably alienated femi¬
nists, but it attracted ardent Roman Catholics. Ultimately, the con¬
servative Fascist and Catholic views of the role of women reinforced
each other, although there was friction because of competition bet¬
ween Catholic women’s organizations and their expanding Fascist
counterparts.

As Mussolini’s ideology became increasingly conservative, he
blamed liberal agnosticism for numerous family problems from a
declining birth rate to illegitimacy, infant mortality, and juvenile
delinquency. The Fascists also had harsh words for the Soviet Union,
which they portrayed as having collectivized the family out of
existence, and for the United States, where commercialism had led to

Family Values and Health

141

a high divorce rate and racial mixing. These problems could all be
avoided or corrected, Mussolini argued, by appropriate state action.

Mussolini’s efforts to please his conservative middle-class sup¬
porters with antifeminist programs were not firmly established when
he came to power in 1922. Not until 1925 did he enact any legislation
involving women. When he did so, not all his policies reflected a
patriarchal reaction. To turn Italy into a modern industrialized state,
with a powerful army capable of conquering new colonies for the
country’s hoped-for rapidly expanding population, required pro¬
moting some of the very changes the regime had sought to curb. This
ambiguity toward feminism could be found in youth groups. They
sought to encourage traditional domesticity, but also involved girls in
party activities outside the home, which undermined parental
authority. The reform of the school system in 1923 was blatantly anti¬
feminist yet allowed a substantial number of women to pursue their
education beyond primary school. Female enrollments at Italian uni¬
versities increased from 6 percent of the student body in 1913-14 to
20 percent in 1938. However, fees charged to female students were
double those paid by males.

Until the late 1930s, the regime tolerated non-Fascist bourgeois
organizations for both men and women, as long as they did not
compete with the party for middle-class loyalties, although the
same tolerance was not shown toward working-class organizations.
The pace of recruiting for Fascist women’s groups increased during
the 1930s, so that by 1940 they had nearly 3.2 million members, or
about 25 percent of all women over the age of 20. Fascist
organizations for girls were clearly differentiated from those for
boys in their emphasis on traditional female roles such as first aid,
child care, and charity, in addition to rhythmic exercise. Highly
regulated gymnastics were practiced to strengthen and beautify the
body, and as an exercise to encourage obedience to rules. However,
after 1930 sports for women were discouraged because of Vatican
protests and the fear that women might regard them as a step
toward emancipation. Mussolini also feared that rugged “mascu¬
line sports” like skiing and horseback riding might cause infertility

in women.

142

Family Values and Health

The reaction against the emancipation of women was also reflected
in marital laws and women’s fashions. Severe punishments for adul¬
tery were enacted, which were even harsher for women than for men.
The authority of the husband was increased. Divorce was strictly
forbidden and penalties for abortion increased from two to five years’
imprisonment for anyone having or abetting in one. Prudish rules
prescribed the shape of bathing suits and the length of skirts. Fascist
leaders made derogatory remarks about high heels and the use of
cosmetics. Erotic literature was outlawed. No pictures of women in
short skirts or skimpy bathing suits were permitted in Fascist newspa¬
pers. Nightlife was also rigorously restricted, much to the pleasure of
the pope.

The coming of the Great Depression to Italy simply accelerated the
withdrawal of women’s rights already apparent in the early years of
the Fascist regime. One of the most important reactionary move¬
ments was in the limitation of the right of women to work outside the
home, a trend also found in democratic countries. Limiting female
employment would accomplish two purposes: it would open up jobs
for unemployed males, and it would eliminate a major distraction to
reproduction, thus increasing the birth rate. In addition, staying at
home would make it more difficult for women to “waste” money on
cosmetics and sweets. Even during the 1920s, women had been
restricted from teaching in some predominantly male secondary
schools, and certain subjects like philosophy in any school. After the
start of the Depression, at a time when a quarter of the national work¬
force was female, preference was given to men for civil service jobs. In
1933 new regulations limited the rights of women even to compete in
state civil service examinations. A law of 1938 limited females to no
more than 10 percent of the workforce in both private and state
employment. A year later exceptions were made for certain “female”
jobs like telephone operators and typists. In all fields women were the
last to be hired and the first to be fired.

Fascist discriminatory legislation had only very limited success. On
the one hand, it managed to prevent the number of women in the
so-called free professions like teaching, jurisprudence, medicine, and
journalism, from ever exceeding 108,000, or 10 percent of all

Family Values and Health

143

professionals. On the other hand, it failed utterly to move even mar¬
ried women, let alone unmarried women, out of the workforce. In
1931,12 percent of married women heldjobs; by 1936, the percentage
had risen to 20.7, almost certainly because employers wanted to retain
cheap labor. Fascist employment policies were less drastic than those
of Nazi Germany, where women were sometimes dismissed from
state jobs. However, the difference is less obvious than it appears
because Italian women were far less likely to have held highly qualified
positions in the first place.

By far the biggest concern of Fascists regarding women was raising
the birth rate. This goal had preceded the Depression but was deep¬
ened by it. Fascist hysteria about demographics also reflected, in
highly exaggerated form, common concerns throughout Europe and
North America in the late 1920s and 1930s, when the birth rate in
many countries fell below replacement levels. Since the mid nineteenth
century, and to only a lesser extent in the 2010s, population size has
frequently been equated with national power and prestige, as well as
with a healthy economy. Moral values have even been attached to
demographic growth. A country with a rapidly growing population
has been considered young, virile, and vigorous, whereas a country
with a stable or declining population has been regarded as old, deca¬
dent, and decrepit.

Mussolini was determined that Italy would not fall into the latter
category. His goal was to raise the country’s population from around
40 million in 1927 to 60 million by the middle of the century. A large
number of laws were enacted to achieve this policy. A punitive tax
was enacted on bachelors in 1926. In the same year the sale and
display of contraceptives - along with their possession, manufacture,
and importation - were outlawed, along with contraceptive litera¬
ture. After 1928 taxes for families with six or more children were
phased out. At the same time marriage loans and baby bonuses were
inaugurated. In 1929 the legal age of marriage for girls was lowered
from 15 to 14 and for boys from 18 to 16. Homosexual acts were
outlawed in 1931 and abortion remained a criminal act. In 1937
marriage and children were preferential factors in government jobs.
Special prizes were given to women with 12 or more children. When

144

Family Values and Health

introducing themselves to Mussolini, women were expected to tell
him how many children they had.

Ironically, all the laws against contraception and abortion, and
favoring population growth, had no effect on reversing Italy’s
declining birth rate. Nothing could overcome the effects of poverty
and women’s desire for more freedom. In 1922 there had been
1,176,000 births, or 30.7 per 1,000 women. These figures shrank
almost every year until they reached an absolute low, in 1936, of
963,000 births, or 22.4 per 1,000, before both figures rose slightly the
following year.

Mussolini’s population policy did produce some long overdue legis¬
lation that was favorable to mothers, children, and health. After 1934
women were given two months of paid leave - one month before
childbirth and another afterward - and their jobs were guaranteed from
the sixth month of pregnancy to six weeks after the birth of the child.
The same law also provided lump sum payments for the birth of each
child. Working mothers were guaranteed time off for breastfeeding.
Factories employing more than 50 workers were required to provide
feeding rooms for new mothers. Free month-long summer camps were
established for children belonging to Fascist youth groups; doctors
decided whether they would benefit more from a holiday in the
mountains or at the seaside. Social diseases such as tuberculosis were
vigorously attacked, and free meals were distributed to the poor.

All in all, women’s programs in Fascist Italy were failures within the
context of what the Fascists were trying to accomplish. Two decades
of trying to reverse rising female employment and declining birth
rates resulted in total bankruptcy. However, Fascist policies did
improve the health of mothers and children.

Women in Nazi Germany:
Kinder, Kirche, und Kiiche'i

The Nazi attitude toward women was in many respects the mirror
image of that in Fascist Italy. There was the same rejection of female
emancipation, the same desire to get women out of the workplace,

Family Values and Health

145

and the same effort to increase the birth rate - policies summarized in
the slogan Kinder, Kirche, und Kuche (“Children, church, and
kitchen”). The differences were mostly a matter of degree. Far more
women were working in Germany when Hitler came to power than in
Italy in 1922, and the birth rate in Germany had fallen even further
than in Italy. German women had also gained the vote in 1919,
whereas Italian women had not, although winning the franchise in
Germany was partly a consequence of defeat in war rather than of a
long suffrage campaign. The idea of rewarding women for their war¬
time contributions had also been current in Germany just as it had
been in the West. However, soon after the war most Germans thought
that a womans place was in the home. Female deputies in the Reichstag
were taken seriously only when discussing “women’s” issues. Male
members of the German Parliament, with the exception of the
Communists, rejected the notion of equal pay for equal work.
Newspapers ridiculed women who had boyish-looking hairdos.

At the time Nazi policies toward women did not appear as reac¬
tionary as they do to us today. Their attitude toward increasing the
population did not differ significantly from that of Italy or even
France. The Nazis were also less prudish when it came to sexual mat¬
ters than the Fascists, probably because the influence of the Catholic
Church was much weaker in Germany. Realistic paintings of nudes in
sensual poses were common in Germany. The cults of the body, sport,
and sex, which had started in the 1920s, continued unabated in the
1930s and early 1940s. Nazi Germany was one of the first countries to
encourage girls to engage in athletics. It was thought that physically fit
women would be more likely to produce healthy babies. Finally, the
Nazis strove for a classless society, or Volksgemeinschaft, whereas the
official Fascist goal was a stratified corporate society, which meant
very different roles for upper- and lower-class women.

The Nazis no more had a fixed policy toward women when they
came to power in 1933 than the Fascists did in 1922. In fact, they had
not thought much at all about women, although what they did think
was conservative, reflecting Hitler’s bourgeois background. Since the
Nazis, in theory at least, rejected liberalism, Marxism, urbanization,
and modernization, it was natural that they would also reject

146

Family Values and Health

feminism, which was closely associated with these movements. Equality
between the sexes seemed to undermine the traditional authority of the
father and therefore of authority in general. Although there had been a
few women in high positions in the early Nazi party, they were explic¬
itly barred from top posts in January 1921. Few women, in fact, ever
gained prominence in the Third Reich, and in 1935 only 2.5 percent of
the 2.5 million members of the NSDAP were women.

Although Hitler considered women every bit as inferior as
Mussolini did, the official Nazi policy, as it eventually evolved, claimed
only that they were different. Following arguments commonly
advanced by conservatives in the late nineteenth century, the Nazis
alleged that they were merely drawing natural distinctions between
men and women. Politics was inherently dirty and it was therefore
better that women remain aloof from its corrupting influence.
However, women were fully entitled to have (and to run) organiza¬
tions of their own, and they were to be honored for their roles as wives
and mothers.

During the Kampfzeit, Nazi women’s organizations tended to be of
the ladies’ aid type. They were supposed to help out poor Nazi fam¬
ilies, care for wounded SA men, repair torn brown shirts, and cook
meals for Nazi rallies. After the Nazi takeover of power, a special
Women’s Bureau was created and headed by Gertrud Scholtz-Klink.
The bureau was involved in areas traditionally regarded as women’s
concerns, but also in many that were regarded as private, such a child¬
bearing and child care, consumer purchasing, menu planning, ethical
values, social life, religious faith, eugenics, ideological indoctrination,
and anti-Semitism. By 1939,8 million women belonged to Nazi asso¬
ciations under the general supervision of Scholtz-Klink, and another
3 million girls belonged to the Hitler Youth.

The Nazis’major goal after 1933 was to increase male employment
by decreasing the number of female jobholders. The greater the
number of men who were working, the greater the number of men
who could afford to marry. The fewer the women in the workplace
the greater the number who were at home having babies for the
fatherland. In early 1933 there were 11.5 million German women
who were still employed, or about 36 percent of the total labor

Family Values and Health

147

force. About twice as many women worked in Germany as in the
United States, even though Germany’s population was only half the
size of the United States’. Whereas male unemployment stood at 29
percent, female joblessness was a relatively low 11 percent. The
main reason for the difference was that heavy industry and
construction - both of which employed mostly men - were hardest
hit by the Depression. A secondary reason may have been the low
wages earned by German women. Like women in other industrial¬
ized countries, they were paid far less than men for the same work,
earning only 66 percent of men’s wages for skilled work and 70
percent for unskilled labor.

The effort to get women out of the workforce succeeded only
partially and temporarily. The Nazis let stand a law passed in May
1932 permitting the dismissal of economically secure female civil
servants. All women school administrators lost their jobs within
months of the Nazi takeover, and the number of female teachers at
girls’ schools declined by 15 percent between 1933 and 1935. After
1934, however, women were gradually allowed to return to university
teaching positions. The percentage of university coeds was supposed
to drop from 20 to 10, which it did in fact do in the late 1930s.
Thereafter, it rose again as the Nazis realized that there were not
enough men to fill professional jobs. After June 1935 women could
no longer be appointed judges or public prosecutors, but this law did
not affect those women who already held such positions. Women
were also declared ineligible for jury duty on the grounds that they
could not think logically or objectively since they were driven only by
emotions.

As for overall female employment, the Nazis succeeded only in
temporarily reducing the percentage of women in the workforce,
which dropped to 31 in 1936 before it rose again to 36 in 1938, the
highest percentage in the world. In absolute numbers there was
actually a steady increase from 11.5 million female workers in 1933 to
12.8 million in early 1939 (within the German territory of 1937). In
the long run the need for workers, as a consequence of industrializa¬
tion and rearmament, outweighed the government’s desire to get
women out of the workforce.

148

Family Values and Health

The primary means of inducing women to leave their jobs was to
offer marriage loans. From June 1933, the Nazis provided married
couples with tax-free loans of up to RM 1,000 - roughly equal to
$2,000 in the currency of the 2010s - in vouchers to be used for
household goods. Repayment was to be at the rate of 1 percent per
month, but 25 percent of the loan was to be canceled with the birth of
each child. Money for the loans came from a tax on childless single
people. To obtain a loan, the wife had to give up her outside work
(although this requirement was eliminated in 1937). The loans
enjoyed some success, and the number of marriages in Germany
increased from 517,000 in 1932 to 774,000 in 1934. However, this fact
did not prevent the percentage of married women working outside
the home from rising from 28.2 in 1933 to 41.3 in 1939. Income tax
deductions for dependent children and subsidies for poor families
were also introduced in 1934 and 1935.

The birth rate climbed from 14.7 per 1,000 in 1933 to 18.4 per
1,000 just a year later, although at no time did women have the average
of four children which the Nazis regarded as ideal. As in Italy and
Russia, as well as France, prolific German mothers were decorated
with medals. On the birthday of Hitler’s mother, August 12, the Honor
Cross of German Motherhood was awarded, starting in 1939. Like
war heroes, mothers were regarded as having risked their lives for the
fatherland. As though they were Olympic champions, they received a
bronze medal for having four children, a silver one for six, and a gold
medal for eight or more. Other positive steps to increase the birth rate
included the liberalization of divorce in the hope that people would
remarry and have more children. Unmarried mothers were also
treated with more compassion than in most parts of Europe and
America during the 1930s.

The Nazis did not rely entirely on positive inducements to raise the
birth rate. Immediately after seizing power, they shut down birth con¬
trol clinics, which had been established during the Weimar Republic,
and outlawed the sale and advertisement of contraceptives as well as
voluntary sterilization. Contraceptives were banned in 1941. In the
Third Reich, as in Italy and the Soviet Union, homosexuality was
regarded as a threat to the survival of the nation and was forbidden

Family Values and Health

149

and severely punished. Abortion, already penalized in the Weimar
Republic, was regarded as a crime against the German people. Those
who performed abortions, except for purposes of “racial hygiene” - in
practice, on women who were intellectually disabled, “asocial,” or
Jewish - were at first subject to up to two years’ imprisonment; physi¬
cians performing abortions could receive ten years’ imprisonment
after 1937; and during the war the death penalty was meted out in
some cases. Nevertheless, as was the case in the Soviet Union, the
criminalizing of abortion merely drove the practice underground. An
estimated 500,000 illegal abortions were performed in 1936, and the
figure may have reached 1 million by 1939.

Although many Germans did their part to see to it that the birth
rate increased under the Third Reich, with the notable exception of
the Nazi party’s most prominent leaders, it is by no means certain that
Nazi procreation policies had anything to do with it. Couples receiving
marriage loans had an average of only one child. In reality, the loans
did not begin to cover the cost of a larger family. The overall increase,
which actually began in the late Weimar Republic, may simply have
resulted from the improving economy, along with a new cohort of
young men whose numbers had not been decimated by World War I.
(It is noteworthy that Russia’s current (2014) modest baby “boomlet”
is not the result of the government’s pronatalist policies but a
consequence of rising prosperity.) As for the welfare of the family as a
whole, it almost certainly was weakened rather than strengthened by
the Nazi experience. The staggering popularity of organizations and
meetings, especially for men and boys, but also for women, could
only disrupt family life, undermine the authority of parents, and
detract from the education of children.

While the Nazis witnessed a modest success in the rise of the birth
rate, their drive to establish an Aryan ideal of feminine beauty was
almost a total failure. The perfect German woman was supposed to
do without cosmetics (a decadent import from the West), to dress
simply, to refrain from wearing corsets and trousers, and to be athletic.
She was to have radiant blonde hair tied in a bun or braided. This
ideal never came close to being realized, least of all by German movie
stars. Even Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, continued to wear lipstick.

150

Family Values and Health

On the whole, German women remained more interested in fashion
than in high politics. In Italy, as well, there was no decline in the
number of the society ladies so hated by Mussolini.

Once more, totalitarian goals had been largely thwarted. German
women were no more likely to be at home in 1939 than they had been
a decade earlier. Unlike Fascist Italy, the birth rate in Germany rose,
but not simply as a result of Nazi policies.

Health and Eugenics in Nazi Germany

Pronatalist legislation in the totalitarian states was just one aspect of
health care, albeit a very important one. Health care was free in the
Soviet Union and far more widely available than it had been in tsarist
Russia, especially in rural areas. The Fascist regime introduced
sickness insurance to most labor contracts in Italy after 1928.
However, social security benefits were more modest than those in the
Soviet Union and in the Scandinavian states at the time. It was in Nazi
Germany that the most dramatic changes in health care occurred.
Some of them were sensible and even far ahead of their time; others
were utterly criminal.

When the Nazis came to power, Germany led the world in the
physical and life sciences as well as the social sciences. Even though 20
percent of German scientists, most of whom were Jewish, had lost their
jobs by 1935, the Nazis profited from their scientific inheritance. In
Hitler’s first four years in power the German government helped raise
standards of health to such an extent that even foreigners were
impressed. Infant mortality was greatly reduced. Diseases were caught
in their early stages because physical examinations were required for
couples prior to marriage or who applied for a marriage loan. The inci¬
dence of tuberculosis and other diseases also diminished noticeably.

The Nazis were concerned about the long-term effects of environ¬
mental pollutants including asbestos - more than two decades before
American scientists. They also established policies to lessen the toxic
effects of alcohol and especially tobacco. A German scientist had already
established a statistical link between second-hand smoke and lung

Family Values and Health

151

cancer in 1928. In the early 1940s German scientists - again long before
their American counterparts - maintained that smoking was addictive.
The Nazi regime launched the worlds first aggressive antismoking
campaign. Tobacco advertisements could not use female-centered
images, athletes, or sports fans. In addition, they could not ridicule
nonsmokers, and nonsmoking restaurants were also established. Hitler,
who had smoked up to 25 cigarettes a day during his sojourn in Vienna,
was depicted as the country’s number one nonsmoker.

German scientists also realized the importance of eating less meat,
especially of the fatty kind, and of eating more fresh vegetables and
fruits, as well as cereals. Hitler himself, with only occasional excep¬
tions, had been a vegetarian since 1924 and referred to meat eaters
as “corpse eaters.” The Reichsarztefuhrer (Reich Physician Fuhrer),
Gerhard Wagner, attacked the recent popularity of highly refined
white bread at the expense of wholegrain bread. The latter was sup¬
posed to be the “final solution of the bread question.” German
medical journals warned against the possible side effects of artificial
preservatives and colorings in food and drinks. Other health hazards
that the Nazis tried to eliminate or at least tried to control included
lead-lined toothpaste tubes - again, 50 years before similar measures
were taken in the United States. They also outlawed narcotics such as
cocaine and heroine and advertisements for alcoholic beverages
directed at children. Drug companies could not make exaggerated
claims about the potency of their products, and Coca-Cola was
declared unfit for young people.

In part because of these enlightened views, those trained in medicine
were among the earliest adherents of Nazism. Eventually, 45 percent
of them became party members, a higher percentage than in any
other professional group. However, the primary impetus for German
doctors to join the party was probably its anti-Semitism rather than
its medical policies. In 1933 half of Germany’s physicians were
Jewish. If they were excluded, the overcrowding and financial stress in
the profession would be eliminated for those “Aryans” who remained.

Another reason that many German physicians were pro-Nazi was
the party’s policy on eugenics, that is, the belief that the human race
can be improved through breeding. Eugenics was far from being either

152

Family Values and Health

a Nazi or even a German phenomenon. It was also popular in Canada,
Switzerland, and Scandinavia. Fascist Italy had a strong and highly
vocal eugenics movement, but it ran into the brick wall of Vatican
opposition. From its inception in the late nineteenth century eugenics
had been associated with progressive politics. Eugenicists in the early
1920s were more concerned about the declining birth rate and the
increase in mental illness than they were with eliminating Jews.

The United States was probably the world leader in the field of
eugenics during the 1920s. Twenty-eight states had passed involuntary
sterilization laws by 1933. Eugenicists held prestigious positions as
professors and as members of major research institutions. American
immigration laws, which eugenicists helped to shape in the middle of
the decade, were based on the idea that certain “races” in northern
and western Europe were superior to eastern and southern European
and non-European races. By 1928 over 75 percent of American col¬
leges and universities offered courses that included eugenics. The
United States was also the first country in the world to permit sterili¬
zations to “purify” the race; by 1939 some 30,000 such operations had
been performed in 29 states. Early Nazi eugenics laws were based on
American models.

American eugenicists admired Germany for having nationwide
laws on sterilization instead of the hodgepodge of legislation that
existed in the 48 American states. In fact, American eugenicists were
the strongest supporters in the world of Nazi eugenics outside of
Germany itself. Among the general public in the United States, 66
percent favored the compulsory sterilization of habitual criminals, a
practice that had existed in America since before World War I.
Sterilization for other purposes also increased in the United States
during 1930s, with 30,000 sterilizations by the end of the decade. The
Americans, including eugenicists, were critical of the Nazis’ anti-
Semitic legislation. The Nazis responded by pointing out (at least
prior to 1938) that German Jews were better treated than American
blacks and were not lynched. However, the extreme persecution of
Jews in Nazi Germany, which began in the late 1930s, alienated the
American public in general, as well as American eugenicists, from the
Third Reich. After the war American eugenicists pretended that they
had had only a very distant relationship with their Nazi counterparts,

Family Values and Health

153

and that they had been critical of their categories, such as “extreme
feeblemindedness.”

In Germany, a law of July 1933 listed a host of supposedly heredi¬
tary mental diseases, including chronic alcoholism, that required
people so classified to be sterilized. By 1945 as many as 375,000 men
and women had undergone the procedure. But the Nazis did not stop
at mere sterilization, most of which had taken place before the out¬
break of the war in 1939. Eugenics evolved into euthanasia, that is, the
killing of “racial inferiors” and “lives unworthy of living.” Starting in
October 1939, about 72,000 people were euthanized in semi-secrecy
before Hitler called a temporary halt to the program in August 1941.
The interruption has usually been credited to a sermon by Bishop
Galen of Munster that induced other Catholic and Protestant cler¬
gymen to denounce euthanasia publicly. This sermon was given on
August 3, three weeks before Hitler issued his decree. However, his
decision may have rested on the simple fact that an earlier target of
70,000 killings had been attained. The victims included Jews, Sinti
and Roma (better known as gypsies), homosexuals, Communists, the
mentally infirm, people suffering from tuberculosis, and a large group
of individuals loosely referred to as “antisocials,” which included drug
addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes, homeless people, and others - who
were often killed in portable gas vans. When the program was later
resumed in Poland, another 130,000 victims died.

Although the parents of some mentally or physically disabled chil¬
dren were actually eager to be rid of them, Hitler kept his program as
secret as possible because he was unsure of the public reaction. The
euthanasia program turned out to be a mere prelude to and prepara¬
tion for the Holocaust. The same killers, and to some extent the same
methods of killing, were used for both actions. The Holocaust, how¬
ever, was conducted with even greater secrecy.

Religion: The Basic Incompatibility

Religion is another area of “family values” in which the totalitarian
states differed radically from each other in theory but followed some¬
what similar practices. In the Soviet Union the attitude toward all

154

Family Values and Health

forms of religion was usually one of overt hostility, although this
policy was temporarily reversed during World War II. The fascist
regimes pretended to be the defenders of Western civilization against
atheistic communism, but their practices were only marginally
friendlier to religion, especially in Nazi Germany. Unfortunately, for a
long time high-ranking church officials in the fascist states failed to
recognize the basic incompatibility between the claims of totalitari¬
anism and those of Christianity.

Although Karl Marx changed his views on a number of things, he
consistently preached that “religion was the opium of the people.” It
kept the masses in a kind of drugged stupor so that they would tol¬
erate the evils of this world - to the enormous benefit of the
bourgeoisie, who exploited them - in hopes of a great reward in the
next world. Marx and his followers especially resented the close links
between church and state that existed in many countries, including
tsarist Russia.

From the moment they seized power in November 1917, the
Communists’ policy toward the Russian Orthodox Church and all
other religious institutions was one of unremitting antipathy.
Communist doctrine and the Soviet constitution proclaimed that
once church and state had been separated, religious beliefs would be
left to individual choice - though Communism also maintained that
religious beliefs were socially destructive superstitions that had to be
fought.

In practice, not just religious beliefs, but also the clergy, religious
organizations, and religious buildings were regarded with hostility.
One of the first acts of the Bolshevik government was to place the
Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church under house arrest when
he was openly critical of the new regime. The passive resistance of the
Russian Orthodox Church against the antireligious policies of the
state resulted in the confiscation of its property, long prison sentences
for clergymen, and the execution of 8,100 Orthodox priests, monks,
and nuns in 1922 alone. During the Great Purges of the 1930s three
out of four priests and church leaders, 18,000 in all, were killed.
Hundreds of churches were destroyed for their building materials in
the 1920s and 1930s, including priceless cultural monuments. The

Family Values and Health

155

country’s largest house of worship, the Church of Christ the Redeemer
in Moscow, was leveled in 1932 in order to make room for the world’s
tallest building, but ended up being replaced by a swimming pool.
Thousands of other churches were closed or turned into warehouses.
By the end of 1930, 80 percent of village churches had been closed.
The printing of religious books, magazines, and newspapers was
forbidden. The only religious teaching permitted had to be conducted
in private and was only tolerated for people over the age of 18. Parents
were not even allowed to tell their children about God in the privacy
of their own homes. Antireligious propaganda was carried out in
schools by the Komsomol and by a special party auxiliary called the
League of the Militant Atheists, which was founded in 1925.
Antireligious museums were opened in Moscow in 1926 to reveal
religious hoaxes.

Even though Stalin relaxed the antireligious campaign in 1934 and
then called it off altogether for the duration of World War II, it had
already caused tremendous damage to Russia’s international reputation.
Almost certainly nothing else the Communists did, not even the
atrocities associated with collectivization and the purges of the late
1930s, caused so much revulsion in the West as the Communists’
militant atheism. Even domestically, its efficacy can be doubted.
Probably two-thirds of the rural population remained believers,
including children who were raised by their religious grandmothers
while their parents were working away from home.

In contrast, for many years church-state relations actually aided
the international reputation of Fascist Italy. Mussolini’s policies
regarding the role of women, birth control and abortion, and pornog¬
raphy were all heartily endorsed by the Vatican. The Holy See also
applauded the regime’s aggressive anticommunist ideology and its
stress on hierarchy and discipline over chaos and anarchy. Both
church and state believed that human beings needed to be corrected,
guided, and restrained, and were suspicious of individualism. Both
taught the importance of submitting to authority and an infallible
leader. The church was pleased when crucifixes were returned to
classrooms and other public buildings in November 1922. The fol¬
lowing year the regime recognized some religious feasts as state

156

Family Values and Health

holidays. When there were disputes they were rarely in the open,
except those over Catholic youth groups in 1931.

Almost certainly the most popular thing that Mussolini ever did
was to resolve the dispute between the Italian state and the papacy,
which had existed since the confiscation of papal territories by the
state in 1870 during the unification of Italy. In protest at the loss of his
territories, and later at anticlerical legislation, the pope became a
voluntary prisoner inside the Vatican City, a tiny enclave in the mid¬
dle of Rome, and forbade practicing Catholics to participate in Italian
politics. A kind of cold war thus started which lasted for nearly six
decades. Church-state relations had begun to improve before
Mussolini became the Italian prime minister in 1922, but Mussolini
succeeded in healing the rift with the papacy primarily because,
unlike his predecessors, he did not have to deal with an opposition
after 1926.

The Lateran Accords of February 1929 made Roman Catholicism
the only state religion and granted the pope sovereign rights in the
Vatican. It also gave the Vatican $92 million in cash and bonds (equal
to well over $1 billion in the currency of the early 2010s). Mussolini
also agreed to enforce the church’s canon law in the state, including
the ban on divorce and the making of religious education compul¬
sory. Catholic youth groups were permitted, as were parochial schools.
In exchange, the Duce received the goodwill of Pope Pius XI and the
country’s practicing (as opposed to nominal) Roman Catholics, who
made up about 24 percent of Italy’s population.

Despite the existence of what seemed like a mutual admiration
society, church-state differences soon emerged. For example, in
1931 Mussolini attempted to ban a youth organization called
Catholic Action for being too political and for competing against
Fascist youth groups. Following a bitter response by the pope,
Catholic Action was reinstated after agreeing to forswear political
activities. Mussolini’s generally friendly attitude toward the church
was strictly a matter of political pragmatism. He had long been a
militant anticlerical during his years as a prominent Socialist and his
personal attitude toward religion never changed. He did not go to
church or observe the church’s holy days, and paid only one visit to

Family Values and Health

157

the pope. In 1938 there was again an open clash with the regime’s
adoption of anti-Semitic policies (to be discussed in Chapter 7).
Ultimately, there was a kind of standoff between church and state.
The regime could not stamp out Roman Catholic values and in most
cases did not want to; the church, for its part, could not seriously
restrict Mussolini’s power. Its resistance was limited to pastoral
letters or encyclicals to the faithful. When it came to the even more
crucial issue of Italy entering World War II in 1940, it was helpless to
prevent it and did not even try.

Nazi Germany occupied a middle ground between Communist
Russia and Fascist Italy on the question of church-state relations.
Ideologically, it was very close to Italy in posing as a defender of
Christianity and Western civilization against communist atheism. No
churches were dynamited into oblivion. However, the Nazis’ relations
with church officials were rarely as close as the Fascists’ in Italy, and
the regime’s policies brought it into harsh conflict with ecclesiastical
authorities far more frequently.

The Nazis and the Fascists greatly benefited from the general swing
away from liberal values toward conservatism that swept through the
entire Western world in the interwar years. The results of this conser¬
vative reaction with regard to women’s rights have already been
observed. By 1918 war, defeat, and revolution had left the Lutheran
and Reformed Calvinist churches of Germany in disarray and brought
into the open long-standing theological and ideological rifts. Liberal
theology - so strong in prewar Germany - was discredited and
replaced by a new wave of fundamentalism closely associated with
nationalism. The Christian nationalists demanded a revival of
German power and spirituality. Not surprisingly, therefore, the vast
majority of Protestant clergy remained hostile to Weimar democracy.
The Nazis appealed to these people by calling their party a “movement
of renewal.” Nazi propagandists frequently spoke idealistically about
self-sacrifice and overcoming selfish materialism.

The Roman Catholic clergy of Germany were for a long time more
skeptical of the Nazis than Protestant theologians. Catholicism had
been the religion of only about one-third of the German people since
the country was unified in 1871. Sporadic discrimination by

158

Family Values and Health

Chancellor Otto von Bismarck made Catholics more suspicious of the
state than the dominant Protestants. Catholic clerics went so far as to
denounce extreme German nationalism and racial anti-Semitism
and, in 1932, said that Roman Catholics could not remain in good
standing with the church and at the same time be members of the
Nazi party. Their opposition, however, was weakened by their tolera¬
tion of cultural anti-Semitism as well as by their own authoritari¬
anism. As in Italy, Catholic clergy and laymen applauded Nazi attacks
on abortion, birth control, pornography, venereal disease, and
Bolshevism. Nevertheless, the Nazis were less successful at attracting
Catholic than Protestant votes.

Privately, Hitler and other leading Nazis viewed Christianity as a
weak and obsolete religion. Hitler told his intimates during his “table
talks” that Jesus was an Aryan and that St Paul had mobilized the
criminal underworld into a kind of proto-Bolshevism. But he was, at
least, wise enough to keep his religious opinions largely to himself,
and sometimes even restrained his more radically anti-Christian sub¬
ordinates. Almost as soon as he came to power, Hitler moved to con¬
ciliate the Catholics who, after 1930, had been much less inclined to
vote for the Nazis, by promising the politically powerful Center party
to uphold the rights of the Roman Catholic Church, including denom¬
inational education, in exchange for the Center party’s vote for the
Enabling Act of March 1933. It was this Act, which had the support of
the Vatican, that put the Reichstag’s official stamp of approval on the
Nazi dictatorship. At the end of that month, a conference of Catholic
bishops responded by withdrawing their objections to Catholics
belonging to the NSDAP. In May the Bavarian bishops issued a pasto¬
ral letter supporting the government’s program of “spiritual, moral
and economic rejuvenation.” 1 The biggest coup for Hitler was the
Concordat, or treaty with the papacy, in July, which granted
independence to Catholic religious and social organizations in
exchange for the Vatican recognizing the regime and renouncing
clerical interference in “politics.”

1 Quoted in Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and Political Dissent in the Third Reich:
Bavaria, 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1983), 191.

Family Values and Health

159

Despite this promising beginning, conflicts were not slow in devel¬
oping between the Nazi regime and both the Protestant and Catholic
clergies. Of 17,000 Protestant pastors, about 3,000 nationalists had
formed their own group of “German Christians” within the NSDAP
as early as 1932. They accepted so-called positive Christianity, which
meant a “racially pure” church, and the renunciation of the Old
Testament and pacifism. Some, like Hitler, even tried to make Jesus
into an Aryan. Like the Nazis, they favored the leadership principle
and temporarily took over all Protestant offices in July 1933, after
holding fraudulent elections.

These moves alarmed about 4,000 of the more liberal Protestant
clergy, who established an Emergency League in late 1933. The League
set up a Confessing Church which, in the Barmen Confessions of
May 1934, supported traditional Christian beliefs and denied the
right of the Nazi party to impose its policies on all aspects of life.
Otherwise, the Confessing Church did not seek to undermine the
Nazi state, let alone overthrow it. Nevertheless, Nazi authorities were
not happy with the Barmen Declaration and arrested numerous
bishops. Adverse reactions both at home and abroad, however, caused
Hitler to back down. The German Christian movement was dissolved.
Denominational schools and youth groups, both Protestant and
Catholic, were harassed and eventually banned. By 1937 over 700
Protestant clergy were in concentration camps, where about 50 of
them died, a fate suffered by even more Catholic clerics. The Vatican
responded in March 1937 with an encyclical entitled Mit brennender
Sorge (“With burning sorrow”), which denounced Nazi breaches of
the Concordat and the worship of the false gods of race and state. This
did not prevent the Nazis from closing all denominational schools by
1939.

Clashes continued to occur between the regime and especially the
Catholic Church over euthanasia and crucifixes being removed from
Bavarian schools. These confrontations again ended with Hitler back¬
ing down, at least temporarily, and gaining credit for his “modera¬
tion.” However much he sympathized with Nazi radicals on religious
issues, Hitler wanted to postpone major confrontations with the
churches until after the war. In the meantime, as in Italy, the state was

160

Family Values and Health

the big winner in the church-state struggle. With the notable and
courageous exception of Jehovah’s Witnesses, 2,000 (out of 10,000) of
whom wound up in concentration camps, the Christian churches on
the whole did not question fundamental Nazi institutions or practices
and supported rather than opposed German involvement in World
War II, especially the invasion of Russia, which was explicitly endorsed
by the Catholic bishops as a holy war. Protestant and Catholic clergy
also did next to nothing to save Jews from the Holocaust, let alone
anything to prevent it. As in the other two totalitarian states, the
church was regarded by the state as little more than a nuisance, with
which compromises occasionally had to be made. At the same time,
none of the three states ever came close to stamping out religion.
Although, in general, religious beliefs and institutions declined in the
totalitarian states, especially in the Soviet Union and among young
people in the fascist states, direct attacks on the church in many cases
only strengthened the allegiance of the faithful.

The family values of the totalitarian states were a bizarre mixture of
enlightenment and brutality. All of the states took positive steps
toward helping mothers and children. Although their attitude toward
birth control, abortion, and demography seems extreme to us today,
they were not particularly unusual in their day, when the threat of
declining populations following the bloodbath of World War I was a
widespread concern. There is little or no evidence that the women’s
policies of the totalitarian states, especially in the fascist countries,
were unpopular with women themselves, and considerable evidence
exists that they were well received by them. Health care also improved
in the three dictatorships. However, when the Nazis turned to their
most radical health-care policy of euthanasia, they so feared hostile
public reaction that they kept it secret.

The religious policies of the totalitarian states were far less uniform
and also far less popular than their health-care policies. The Soviet
government needlessly alienated millions of its own citizens and out¬
raged public opinion around the world with its antireligious policies.
Mussolini was by far the most cautious of the dictators toward religion
and was rewarded with the warm support of the Catholic Church

Family Values and Health

161

throughout most of his dictatorship, until he turned to anti-Semitism
and world war. Hitler’s religious policy was more negative and aggres¬
sive than Mussolini’s, but he knew how to restrain his more radical
followers, and also when to back down.

As in so many other aspects of totalitarian society, moderate and
relatively traditional policies relating to family values and health care
were popular and worked reasonably well, or at least did not have
catastrophic consequences. Radical policies, however, led to popular
hostility and ultimate failure.

Totalitarian Terror

The persecutions ... were profoundly self-destructive.

If the treatment of women was an area in which the totalitarian states
differed relatively little from the democracies, the use of terror was
what most differentiated the two systems. The constant rejection of
the status quo for the sake of utopian changes in the lives of ordinary
people was bound to create resistance, which could only be overcome
with terror, or at least the threat of terror. The more grandiose the
changes the more terror was required. Each dictatorship created its
own morality which justified the use of terror against anyone who
opposed the new utopia. Not surprisingly, therefore, Stalin, who
demanded a top-to-bottom change of Soviet society, wielded the most
terror, whereas Mussolini, with his much more modest program,
relied on terror by far the least of the three dictators.

Contrary to expectations, the use of terror increased with time in all
three dictatorships. Opponents of the Fascists and Nazis, who were

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

Totalitarian Terror

163

horrified by the terror used by both parties to gain power, consoled
themselves with the belief that once in power the responsibilities of
governing would force the dictators to become more moderate and
responsible. Although there were periods of consolidation and retrench¬
ment - the New Economic Policy in Russia, the years 1926 to 1935 in
Italy, and from the middle of 1934 to the end of 1937 in Germany - over
time the three totalitarian states became more radical and terroristic.
The only exception was the Soviet Union after Stalins death in 1953.

It is easy, especially when reading a brief account such as this, to
imagine that terror in the totalitarian states was constant, that all citi¬
zens lay awake at night trembling with fear that the secret police
would knock on the door at any moment. Such fears did exist in some
people some of the time, but they were by no means uniform or
universal. People who were not interested in politics, who did not
belong to some pariah group like the kulaks in the Soviet Union or
the Jews in Nazi Germany, usually learned what not to do and what
not to say. Even for them, however, their security was by no means
certain, especially not in Russia during the late 1930s, or in Germany
toward the end of World War II.

A purge was a refinement of totalitarian terror. By definition it was
limited to party members. It was a luxury that only a stable regime
with a multitude of reliable supporters could afford. It was also a means
of invigorating a movement with new blood and of restoring revolu¬
tionary fervor. Purges were a regular feature only in the Soviet Union,
but this may simply have been a product of the Communist regimes
longevity. It is difficult to imagine a purge not taking place in Italy and
Germany after the deaths of Mussolini and Hitler if the Fascist and
Nazi regimes had continued in power after their founders’ demise.

The Great Purges in the Soviet Union

Terror was so pervasive and lasted so long in the Soviet Union that it
is not easy to isolate it from Soviet history in general, especially dur¬
ing the long dictatorship of Joseph Stalin. Terror began the moment
the Bolsheviks seized power by force. It intensified with an abortive

164

Totalitarian Terror

attempt to assassinate Lenin in 1918, and even more so during the
Civil War. It receded, but did not disappear, during Lenin’s NEP.
Certainly, the collectivization of Russian farms was nothing if not a
gigantic act of terror in which millions of Russian peasants were killed
or imprisoned and nearly all the rest were traumatized. All of these
early waves of terror were connected to some clearly recognized
political or economic goal: the seizure and consolidation of power
and the economic transformation of the countryside. The terror was
directed against people who opposed the government’s goals. What is
remarkable about the Great Purges in the 1930s is that they were
aimed at loyal party members who at most had only verbally objected
to Stalin’s plans or criticized Stalin privately in small groups. They
posed no immediate threat to the great dictator, but for Stalin, who
tapped the phones of dozens of Communist leaders, criticism was
tantamount to personal betrayal and treason. In time the purges
developed a dynamic of their own and enveloped people who had
never even been oppositionists. Simply having belonged to the
“wrong” category, such as having once being classified as a kulak, was
sufficient to send someone to a work camp or worse.

The Great Purges of 1934 to 1938 have provoked more controversy
among historians than perhaps any other aspect of Soviet history. Was
there a conspiracy to overthrow Stalin? On what basis did Stalin
choose his victims? Why were there confessions to absurd allegations
like plotting to restore capitalism or conspiring with Nazi Germany?
How many people were killed? What impact did the purges have on
Russia’s image in the West? How did the purges affect Russia’s
performance in World War II? Only educated guesses have been
offered as answers for these and other questions; definitive explana¬
tions, if they exist, await the further opening up of Soviet archives.

Most historians believe that we must look for answers to these
questions in Stalin’s highly suspicious and even paranoid character.
Stalin made sharp divisions between his trustworthy friends and his
vicious enemies. Moreover, anyone who appeared to contradict his
idealized image of himself became his enemy. Even to have associated
with a former enemy of Stalin’s, especially Leon Trotsky, was enough
to brand a person as his enemy. Many Communist leaders had

Totalitarian Terror

165

opposed the drastic nature of collectivization and made dire predic¬
tions about the possible consequences, which turned out to be all too
true. Many of these critics had been members of the Bolshevik party
long before the Revolution and enjoyed great popularity with the gen¬
eral public. They were also aware of Stalin’s modest role in the
Revolution, which clearly undermined his efforts to rewrite history
with himself in the role of Lenin’s right-hand man. Even if Stalin did
not believe that a conspiracy to unseat him was afoot, he might well
have believed that the establishment of an alternative government at
some future date was possible.

In other words, the purges may have been a pre-emptive strike
against anyone with a power base or any trace of independent thought.
Stalin must have also realized that the Communist regime itself
reeked of illegitimacy. It had come to power through force and had
never won a free election. It did not enjoy the sanctity of the tsarist
regime which had ruled for centuries by divine right. Stalin’s support
was strong only among his own appointees.

The Great Purges were instigated by the assassination of Sergei
Kirov, the popular leader of the Communist party in Leningrad, in
December 1934. Kirov had committed the unforgivable sin of getting
more applause and more votes than Stalin at a party Congress in 1934.
Although the circumstances of the assassination are still uncertain,
most historians think that Stalin himself ordered the murder in order
to destroy a potential rival for the party’s leadership and to justify the
arrest and execution of millions of people he regarded as counter¬
revolutionaries and political opponents. No other assassination could
have stirred up as much outrage and alarm. Another hypothesis is
that Stalin may have been inspired by the Reichstag fire in Berlin the
previous year, which Hitler had used as a pretext for eliminating the
Communist party of Germany.

Immediately after Kirov’s assassination, the secret police, now
known by its acronym NKVD, began rounding up Old Bolsheviks,
those party members who had joined the party before 1917, well
before Stalin reached his ascendancy. Although the Old Bolsheviks
were the best-known Communists to be arrested, and their trials
drew by far the most attention, they were by no means alone. The

166

Totalitarian Terror

brunt of the purges was actually borne by the Communists who had
joined the party during the Civil War and had risen to some of the top
ranks during the 1930s. They had always been loyal Stalinists, but
they knew about Lenin’s Political Testament, and some of them were
also aware of Stalin’s responsibility for the collectivization disaster.
Those holding high party offices, along with their associates, were
five times more likely to be arrested than rank-and-file members.

These highest-ranking party members were given show trials between

1936 and 1938. None of the accused were provided with a lawyer. By

1937 there were so many defendants that to expedite matters NKVD
officials wrote out their confessions in advance to incredible crimes,
such as plotting to restore capitalism, attempting to wreck the socialist
system, or wanting to cede Soviet territory to Germany or Japan.
Rarely were the party members convicted on the basis of any evidence
other than their own confessions. The mystery is: Why did they confess?
Why were their confessions apparently believed by so many Soviet
citizens? And why was there not a revolt in the party against these
miscarriages of justice?

Historians have again been forced to resort largely to speculation to
answer these questions. The accused were in no position to object in
principle to fake trials. They had not protested against such trials in
the past when the victims had been non-Communists and the accusa¬
tions against them had been based on false evidence. Nor had they
ever rejected the idea that the party’s leaders had the right to deter¬
mine who were class enemies. They had also subscribed to the idea
that the party as a whole was always right and that to disagree with the
party line was to commit the unpardonable act of “factionalism.” Now
that these principles were turned against them they had no recourse.
Some historians have suggested that they believed that by confessing
they were doing a final service to the party. It seems just as likely,
however, that they were hoping that confession would spare their lives
or at least the lives of their family members. Threats against relatives
were unprecedented in Russian history; in tsarist times even revolu¬
tionaries had not feared for their families.

It is known that recalcitrants were physically tortured and kept
awake for up to 90 hours at a time; threats were also made against

Totalitarian Terror

167

their loved ones. Those arrested were kept utterly isolated; not even
family members were allowed to visit them. They were interrogated
night and day while being kicked and insulted and forced to rehearse
their confessions. There were no opportunities to make heroic
speeches on the scaffold. None of the major defendants was spared,
and only 1 percent of all defendants in political trials were acquitted.
For Stalin, who secretly watched the major trials, the confessions were
the ultimate means of humiliating his rivals and of giving the proce¬
dures an appearance of legality.

The show trials of party bigwigs represented only the tip of the
iceberg during the purges. Stalin found the purges both of major
and minor party officials and of nonparty members a useful way of
explaining to himself and to others the failures of collectivization
and industrialization. Those atrocities could now be blamed on
“wreckers” who had deliberately sabotaged the heroic efforts of
Soviet workers and peasants to modernize their country. Stalin had
an endless number of accomplices in this process, from the
Politburo to the secret police, to writers and numerous anonymous
informers. The members of the secret police, over which there were
no external controls other than Stalin, were handsomely rewarded
for their efforts, their pay being quadrupled until they were the
highest-paid government agents. Their handsome salaries and
other privileges only made them more eager to justify their
existence by finding still more “traitors.” If they could not do so,
their turn might come next. Not even the Gestapo and the SS in
Nazi Germany lived in fear of that.

The mechanics of the purge, like those of collectivization, soon
acquired a momentum of their own and developed into what is known
as the “Great Terror,” which involved perhaps eight or nine times as
many nonparty members as Communists. The more people Stalin
killed, the more family members and friends of the dead he had to
fear. Denunciations, which the government had encouraged during
collectivization, once again became popular. An anonymous letter to
the authorities was sufficient for a student to get rid of an unpopular
professor or for a secretary to destroy her boss. Anyone could be
accused of anything. The circumstances were ideal for settling old

168

Totalitarian Terror

scores and at the same time proving one’s loyalty to the party. Every
meeting of writers and all literary journals were filled with malicious
accusations. In the end, the majority of members in the Union of
Writers were either shot or sent to labor camps. Lists of enemies were
also drawn up in mass meetings on collective farms and in factories
for the ostensible reason of discovering “wreckers” who had disrupted
production. Anyone could be included on the list on the basis of
hearsay evidence, but most of the accused were people who drew
relatively high salaries.

The Terror climaxed with the decimation of the armed forces in
1937-8. Hitler went to a great deal of trouble to dismiss (but not kill
or imprison) two of his top military leaders in early 1938. By contrast,
Stalin, who like Hitler had a long-standing distrust of the military,
had his top military and naval officers shot by the hundreds with or
without a trial. The executions included 3 of the country’s 5 marshals,
3 out of 4 full generals, all 12 lieutenant generals, 60 of 67 corps com¬
manders, and 130 out of 199 divisional commanders. The navy lost all
8 of its admirals. The army lost altogether 35,000 men, or half of its
officer corps, although 30 percent of those arrested were later rein¬
stated. Nevertheless, by the time the last purged officer was shot two
weeks before the German invasion in June 1941, one-third of the
Soviet officer corps had been killed. No officer corps in modern
times, including the Soviet Union’s during World War II, ever suffered
such staggering casualties as Soviet officers sustained in peacetime.
Stalin carried out the military purges in stages, to allow time for new
officers to be trained, and to avoid the complete destruction of the
country’s striking power. However, this training was far from complete
so the effectiveness of the army was no doubt severely weakened, par¬
ticularly during the war with Finland in the winter of 1939-40.

Numbers alone do not tell the whole story about the effects of the
military purge. Officers with the most experience in mechanized war¬
fare, and who had developed the habit of thinking independently dur¬
ing the Civil War, as well as those who had been close to Trotsky, were
the most likely to be purged. For example, General Mikhail
Tukhachevsky, who had served the Communists heroically during
the Civil War, and who had created the largest tank force in the world,

Totalitarian Terror

169

was one of Stalin’s prime targets. He was convicted of conspiring with
the Germans on the basis of documents forged by the Nazis and con¬
veyed to Stalin by German Communists.

Estimates of the number of people killed during the purges vary
considerably. Authors who have given high estimates have been
accused by other scholars of being unreconstructed cold warriors.
Those who have put forward low estimates have opened themselves
up to the charge of being pro-Soviet. The latest estimate, based on
Soviet archives, is that around 2.5 million people were arrested,
although some estimates range as high as 7 million. Whatever the
number, those arrested were tried secretly, after which around 681,000
were executed. If we count those who died in work camps the number
would be closer to 1.2 million. By 1939, 850,000 members of the
Communist party had been purged, 681,000 for so-called counter¬
revolutionary crimes, about one-third of the party’s membership in
1937. Another 3.75 million were sent to labor camps. Of the 1,966
delegates to the Seventeenth Party Congress in 1934,1,108 were sub¬
sequently purged, arrested, or killed. Seventy of the 139 members of
the Central Committee elected by that Congress were executed.
Without any question, Stalin killed more Communists than the fascist
dictators. So many people died of unnatural causes during that
decade, including the state-induced famine of 1931-2, that Stalin had
the chief census takers shot as “enemies of the people,” and a falsified
census was published.

By the end of the purges, between 3 and 8 million prisoners lan¬
guished in roughly 125 slave labor camps or gulags, where 90 percent
of them died between 1936 and 1938. The gulags (often collectively
called “the Gulag”) had existed since the time of Lenin, but it was
only in Stalin’s day that their number reached truly mammoth
proportions. Following the purges, the number of inmates never
declined and may have reached 15 million by the end of World War II.
During Stalin’s dictatorship an incredible 20 percent of all Soviet
males had spent time in a work camp, 18 million people in all. The
total land area of these camps, together with the surrounding land
worked by the prisoners, was larger than that of any European country
west of Russia. Not surprisingly, the camps could not adequately

170

Totalitarian Terror

house, clothe, or feed their inmates. Their economic productivity was
minimal, and actually secondary, because Stalin’s primary objective
was to terrorize the population into submission.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the purges and the Terror is
that they did not generate a single assassination attempt against Stalin.
(By contrast, there were at least 42 plots to kill Hitler.) Popular reac¬
tion to the purges and Terror appears to have been mostly positive. To
the still poorly educated Russian in the street who was prone to
believe in conspiracies, there seemed to be plenty of evidence that the
economy had been “wrecked.” Soviet citizens did not want to believe
that their government’s miscalculations and incompetence had caused
the economic chaos. To most people, the trials and arrests seemed to
provide logical answers. If someone knew of an innocent relative
being arrested, they merely assumed that it was an isolated mistake
about which Stalin had no knowledge. Many people, particularly
recently collectivized peasants, must have taken a grim satisfaction in
seeing some of the people who had caused them so much misery
suffering their well-deserved retribution.

Stalin’s exact role in the purges has been another subject of many
historical debates. Few if any historians doubt that the purges could
have taken place without his instigation and support. His office in
the Kremlin was the command post of the Terror. However, Stalin
himself kept a low profile throughout the whole ordeal, giving no
public speeches for two years and granting interviews for publication
only twice after March in 1937, and once in all of 1938. Other people
such as the trial prosecutor, Andrei Vyshinsky, and the head of the
NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, were much more prominent. It was Yezhov
who turned over to Stalin long lists of alleged “wreckers,” with pro¬
posed sentences, for the dictator’s signature. Stalin approved 383
such lists of the names of 44,000 party, government, military,
Komsomol, and economic officials as well as leading individuals in
the nation’s cultural life.

Of all of the names presented to him, Stalin probably personally
considered only the cases of the members of the Central Committee,
the High Command of the army, and the provincial secretaries of the
party, both past and present. He took the trouble to call the victims

Totalitarian Terror

171

just before their arrest to assure them that they had nothing to fear.
After meeting with the Central Committee in February and March
1937, Stalin no longer regarded it to be necessary for him to consult
that body before having people arrested, including members of the
Central Committee itself. He was concerned with every detail of the
purge trials and saw to it that the “conspirators” in the show trials
were assured that their lives would be spared if they only confessed.
Later he relished the reports of their executions.

Some historians, while not contesting Stalin’s central role in the
Terror, have argued that he had no carefully laid plan. He was at times
indecisive and made several false starts and retreats. It is also apparent
that once begun, the Terror, like collectivization, developed a
momentum of its own, marked by personal hatred, confusion, and a
lack of coordination. Such chaos finally gave Stalin the excuse to
authorize a decree blaming local authorities for excessive vigilance,
just as he had blamed local party officials in early 1930 for being
“dizzy with success” in the middle of collectivization.

The Terror of the late 1930s had consequences that went far beyond
the people who were killed or imprisoned. The Soviet Union suffered
another huge loss of prestige abroad, although not nearly as large a one
as it might have done had Stalin not successfully sealed off the Soviet
Union from the rest of the world. No one could leave or enter the
country without the regimes permission. Only the purge trials were
well known in the West, and these caused as much puzzlement as hor¬
ror. If the incredible charges made against high party, government, and
military officials were actually true, then the country was filled with
traitors and was ripe for counter-revolution. If they were false, what was
one to think of a government that had manufactured spurious charges
against its highest government and military officials and published
them abroad? How much did one have to fear - or hope for - from a
military that had just been decimated by its own leader? On the whole,
the foreign press believed the charges, including those leveled against
Soviet military leaders. So too did the US ambassador, Joseph Davies.

Domestically the results were equally serious. The largest factories
lost most of their highly qualified engineers. The Kharkov Physics
Laboratory, one of Europe’s best, was ruined by the arrest of most of

172

Totalitarian Terror

its senior staff. The most serious consequences, however, were intan¬
gible. Senior and competent civilian and military officials were
replaced by people who were much younger and less qualified. The
replacements were often careerists who were unwilling to take risks.
Managerial authority was badly undermined. Workers were encour¬
aged to criticize their supervisors, but managers were not eager to
discipline workers for fear of subsequently being denounced by them.

For Stalin personally, the purges and Terror were a complete suc¬
cess, at least in the short term. His cult of personality was more firmly
entrenched than ever. Like Hitler during the Holocaust, Stalin was
now surrounded not by colleagues, but by accomplices who were
implicated in his crimes. The Communist party had been eliminated
as a ruling class. Only local bosses had any real authority, which
existed solely at the pleasure of the great dictator. The party was now
less important than the police and even the state. Its deliberative
bodies, like the Central Committee and Politburo, rarely even met.
Stalin had removed all possible alternative sources of power or even
criticism. When he was faced with the ultimate test of the Nazi invasion
in 1941, he had no need to fear a domestic revolt or the rise of a Soviet
Napoleon. At the same time, there was also no one left to protect him
from his own stupidity.

Terror and Persecution in the Fascist States

Nothing comparable to the Great Purges and the Terror existed in the
two fascist states, at least before World War II. However, persecution
in the fascist states, being far better known in the West, caused more
of an outcry than what took place in the Soviet Union. In general, the
fascist dictators, unlike Stalin, were interested only in actual, not
potential, opposition. It is revealing that the NKVD had 366,000
employees in 1941 in a country of 183 million. By comparison, 20,000
people (including clerks and typists) out of a population of 83.7 mil¬
lion worked full-time for the German secret police, the Gestapo, in
1939. Hitler and Mussolini were far more popular than Stalin, and
therefore much less dependent on terror to prop up their regimes.

Totalitarian Terror

173

The only major peacetime purge in either country was the previously
mentioned Rohm Purge of June 1934 in Germany. The outrage that
one might assume would have arisen from the purge was tempered by
the knowledge that many of those killed were notorious murderers
and sadists. Compared to Stalin, therefore, Hitler was a rank amateur
when it came to purging. Mussolini, too, had the power to purge and
his party secretaries resorted to it thousands of times, but usually with
nonlethal consequences. The expulsions from the Fascist party dem¬
onstrated that members had to be careful with their speech and
actions or they would lose their privileged status.

Nevertheless, terror and persecution certainly did exist in Italy and
Germany prior to World War II, even if the results were not as overt
and bloody as in Stalinist Russia. In both fascist states the use of terror
was most common during the rise to power of the regime and in the
subsequent period of consolidation before flaring up again in the year
or so preceding World War II. Contributing enormously to the terror
were denunciations by private citizens in all three of the totalitarian
states. In Germany, the Gestapo was flooded by denunciations from
angry people of all classes who had grudges against their neighbors
and relatives; only 10 percent of the denunciations came from other
Nazi organizations. Faced with an embarrassment of riches, the
Gestapo was forced to choose which allegations to pursue and which
to ignore. Complaints by lower-class people against their social supe¬
riors were rarely pursued. Likewise, denunciations by wives against
husbands were not taken seriously unless the latter were Jewish. Even
Hitler was concerned about the avalanche of denunciations, but nei¬
ther he nor the Gestapo could stop it. In most cases no real proof of
antistate activity could be found. While grumbling about various
aspects of Nazi policies might have been common, it did not neces¬
sarily represent opposition to the regime as a whole. In Italy the
Blackshirts, or Squadristi, made a habit of beating up their opponents
and torturing their leaders by pouring castor oil down their throats.
The last rampage of the Blackshirts occurred in Florence in October
1925, 16 months after the murder of Mussolini’s opponent Giacomo
Matteotti. They killed several Fascist opponents and injured many
others, even as foreign tourists watched in horror.

174

Totalitarian Terror

In 1926 a secret police was created in Italy which, together with the
use of propaganda, was aimed at consolidating the regime. The Fascist
judicial system sometimes recommended torture, but rarely the death
penalty, for political offenders. A Special Tribunal handed down
prison sentences totaling over 28,000 years to more than 5,000 of the
accused, but 80 percent of the defendants were acquitted or let off
with a reprimand or a warning. Loopholes and corruption allowed
others to escape punishment altogether. As many as 5,000 people at
any one time, and 17,000 altogether, were less fortunate and became
political prisoners on small penal islands or under “controlled
residence,” often in some diseased-infested village in the southern
part of the country. Another 160,000 were kept under some kind of
surveillance. Only 29 Italians were executed for political crimes,
including spying, between 1926 and 1943, in large part because there
simply was not much opposition to the regime, at least prior to the
late 1930s. Many hundreds of other anti-Fascists were tried by the
regular courts. In these cases there were somewhat better opportu¬
nities for acquittal because many judges were not Fascists. Most of the
opponents of Fascism were intellectuals, especially those living
abroad.

A major reason for the lack of opposition and persecution was the
prevalence of fear that had been instilled by the Fascists between 1919
and 1925. Whether consciously or not, Mussolini followed the advice
of Nicolo Machiavelli in believing that it was impossible to rule
without first being feared. The early examples of terror were enough
to keep nearly all Italians in line in later years. Ordinary Italians feared
the authorities, anyone they did not know, and even their friends and
family who might get them into trouble.

The Persecution of Jews

After 1945 it became apparent that Hitler had come a long way in
matching Stalin’s achievements as a mass murderer. In addition to
the extermination of 5 to 6 million Jews, he was also responsible
for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of disabled Germans

Totalitarian Terror

175

and millions of Sinti and Roma. In other countries occupied by the
Nazis during World War II, millions of people were killed, probably
11 million noncombatant deaths in all. In light of his ruthlessness in
launching a new war in 1939, and brutally exterminating millions of
innocent people, it is surprising that Hitler, in contrast to Stalin, was
relatively cautious about the use of terror in peacetime, especially
before 1938.

There has been considerable controversy about the role of anti-
Semitism in the Nazi rise to power. The older view held anti-Semitism
to be crucial to the Nazis’ success. More recently, however, historians
have tended to downplay its centrality, arguing that extreme anti-
Semitism was more the product of the Nazi regime than the reason
for its coming to power. A major reason for the new interpretation is
the realization that Nazi anti-Semitism was far from unique in the
Weimar Republic, let alone in other European countries or in North
America. Nearly all the other political parties, except for the Social
Democrats, exploited the widespread prejudice for their own
political gains. Moreover, Nazi anti-Semitism had been stronger in
the early 1920s than it was in the early 1930s, when the Nazis finally
achieved power. The biographies of numerous leading Nazis have
also revealed that surprisingly few of them were anti-Semites before
1925. Among those who were not anti-Semitic were Josef Goebbels;
the SS leader, Heinrich Himmler; Albert Speer; Baldur von Schirach;
and one of the key players in the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann.
A survey of rank-and-file Nazis carried out during the 1930s showed
that only 12.9 percent of them had joined the party because they
were strongly anti-Semitic, and 48 percent of the early Nazis were
not anti-Semitic at all.

Another misconception about the Nazis that has recently been
rectified by historians is that anti-Semitism was strongest among
the lower middle class, people like small businessmen, clerks, civil
servants, and elementary school teachers. Anti-Semitism did indeed
exist among these groups, and their sheer size made them an impor¬
tant element among Nazi voters, but it was much stronger within the
more respectable upper middle class, especially professional people
like physicians, lawyers, journalists, young university instructors, and

176

Totalitarian Terror

university students, who were hoping to become professionals. These
were the people most likely to be in direct economic competition with
the Jews, who were very prominent among German professionals; for
example, in 1930, 22 percent of German lawyers were Jewish.
Nevertheless, with the possible exception of the students, what these
anti-Semitic groups wanted was at most the deportation of German
Jews; nearly all of them would have been horrified at the prospect of
the Jews being murdered en masse, as Josef Goebbels hinted at in his
diary. The persecution of Jews was gradual and by no means always
violent. Until 1938 most Germans preferred a “cold pogrom” of
economic discrimination, particularly in relation to hiring and mem¬
bership of social organizations. Anti-Semitic “moderates” wanted to
solve what was commonly called the “Jewish question” with a nume-
rus clausus, or cap on Jewish representation, in various economic
fields based on their proportion of Germany’s total population,
meaning no more than 1 percent.

For the first five years of Nazi rule Hitler seemed to be moving
toward this seemingly “moderate” solution. He had personally toned
down the crudeness of his anti-Semitism in his speeches after 1928 to
appeal to the respectable middle class. In October 1930 he publicly
announced that he had nothing against “decent” Jews and rejected
violent anti-Semitism. Only three times between 1933 and 1939 did
he publicly voice his hatred of Jews. There is no indisputable evidence
that when he came to power in January 1933 he had decided what he
wanted to do about the Jews beyond legal discrimination, as outlined
in Mein Kampf. As for the German Jews themselves, the majority
thought that Nazi anti-Semitism was pure demagoguery and need not
be taken seriously; nothing bad would happen to them. The pessi¬
mists feared that they would lose their civil liberties and perhaps
some of their jobs, but nothing more.

Prior to 1938, political persecution was by no means focused
exclusively on Jews. Of the nearly 100,000 Germans who had been
thrown into makeshift or permanent concentration camps at one
time or another during 1933, almost none were there specifically
because they were Jewish. Anti-Nazis, especially Communists and
Social Democrats, were the most likely candidates for imprisonment,

Totalitarian Terror

177

and Jews were incarcerated only if they belonged to an anti-Nazi
political party. Most of the early concentration camp prisoners were
released within a few weeks. After 1933 the peacetime camp
population declined to a low of 5,000 in 1936. Following the annexa¬
tion of Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia in 1938 and 1939, the
number ballooned to at least 21,400, a tiny number compared to the
million or more incarcerated in Stalin’s labor camps at the time.
However, the figures for Germany do not reveal the total number of
people who passed through the concentration camps before the war.
In the mid-1930s, the majority of inmates were habitual criminals,
prostitutes, homosexuals (who were treated as the lowest category
and were there to be “cured” of their orientation), pimps, drunkards,
beggars, the “work-shy,” and Jehovah’s Witnesses (because of their
refusal to serve in the armed forces).

One of the biggest misconceptions about Nazi concentration
camps that were established in Germany before the war is that they
were secret. It is true that released prisoners were forbidden to dis¬
cuss their imprisonment on pain of being reincarcerated. The
existence of the camps themselves, however, was anything but
secret. Himmler actually held a press conference to announce the
establishment of the first “permanent” concentration camp at
Dachau two days before it was open for business (see Plate 20). In
early 1938 he invited journalists to visit the Sachsenhausen
concentration camp near Berlin. Because the camps were intended
in part to intimidate Nazi opponents, it would have made no sense
to keep them a secret. However, the Nazis attempted to keep the
existence of extermination camps that were erected outside
Germany during World War II totally secret. They feared both
domestic and international repercussions in case their existence
were exposed (see Plate 21). Although the prewar camps were
clearly designed to strike fear in the minds of actual or potential
opponents of the regime, it should not be assumed that most
Germans opposed them. On the contrary, they welcomed them as
a way of cleaning up “lawlessness.” The Nazis also presented them
as educational work camps where asocials would be rehabilitated
(see Plate 22).

178

Totalitarian Terror

Although the persecution of German Jews began soon after the
Nazi takeover, it was not terribly intense, at least by later standards.
In 1933 some Austrian Catholic anti-Semites even complained that
Nazi anti-Semitism was a fraud! A boycott directed by the Nazis
against Jewish businesses, doctors, and lawyers in April 1933 failed
miserably after just one day, because of lack of support despite the
presence of intimidating SA in front of Jewish-owned stores. The
only concrete result of the boycott was the arousal of international
indignation. Later in the same month those with just one Jewish
grandparent were excluded from the civil service, including teaching
in state schools. A quota was placed on the large number of Jewish
university students. Jewish professors and professors married to Jews
(15 percent of the entire professoriate) lost, or were supposed to lose,
their jobs. Jewish pupils could still attend state schools, but they had
to sit on segregated benches.

The impact of the civil service law was lessened at the insistence of
President Hindenburg and Hitler’s German Nationalist partners: Jews
who had been practicing their professions before the outbreak of
World War I, war veterans, and children of Jews who had been killed
in the war were excluded. These exceptions turned out to be much
more numerous than Hitler had imagined. For example, half the
country’s 717 judges and 70 percent of its lawyers were not covered by
the new law. Jewish businessmen, who were far more numerous than
Jewish civil servants or professional people, were only moderately
affected by anti-Semitic actions until 1937, especially in comparison
to what they were to confront later. Nevertheless, 53,000 Jews were
frightened into leaving Germany in 1933. However, the anti-Semitism
of host countries, including the United States, and homesickness for
Germany, caused 16,000 of these refugees to return to Germany.

The second phase of Jewish persecution began with the enactment
of the Nuremberg Laws in September 1935, legislation that provoked
few comments in the foreign media, including that of the United
States. The laws have often been seen as the real beginning of the
Holocaust because they deprived Jews of their German citizenship
and subjected them to a number of discriminatory regulations. Jews
themselves, however, did not universally hold this negative view at

Totalitarian Terror

179

the time. After the chaotic treatment of Jews during the first two years
of Nazi rule, the laws seemed to insure German Jews a secure if
second-class position in German society, an attitude shared by most
Germans except for the more radical Nazis who thought they did not
go nearly far enough. Jews lost their right to vote in German elections
(but not in their own communal elections), but general elections were
now meaningless anyway. Marriage and sexual relations (subse¬
quently very loosely defined) were forbidden between Jews and
Gentiles, but this proscription did not prevent liaisons from taking
place despite numerous denunciations by “Aryans.” Ultraconservative
Jews (in both Germany and Austria) actually welcomed the laws
because they thought the laws would encourage Jewish cultural
autonomy, as well as disabuse Jews of the notion that they would ever
be accepted in German society, and might encourage them to return
to the traditional faith. The Zionist leadership in Palestine also
showed little if any concern about the legislation, and were willing to
help German Jews emigrate only if they came to Palestine. For highly
assimilated German Jews, however, the Nuremberg Laws were a kind
of “social death” which terminated relations with many of their
Gentile friends and neighbors.

In answering the vexing question of who was a Jew, Hitler chose
the most restrictive definition of the four proposed to him. To be
classified as a full Jew one had to have three Jewish grandparents, or
two if one actively practiced Judaism. There were also around
200,000 first- and second-class Mischlinge, who had only one or two
Jewish grandparents, but they were merely ineligible for certain jobs.
The German public evidently viewed these laws as reasonable and
necessary. Academic journals at the time pointed out that American
(black/white) antimiscegenation laws defining Negroes were far
more encompassing than the Nuremberg Laws. German and
Austrian Jewish newspapers generally welcomed the laws as sig¬
naling a return to order.

Severe persecution of the Jews began only in 1938, when Hitler felt
that Germany’s armed forces were strong enough that he no longer
had to fear international reactions. Until then Jews who felt that they
had been abused could still appeal to the police with a reasonable

180

Totalitarian Terror

expectation that their complaint would be taken seriously. However,
in 1937 individual local Nazi bosses, called Gau leaders, had already
begun attacking Jewish business owners and forcing them to sell, or
to “Aryanize,” their property at artificially low prices. The major
turning point came with the annexation of Austria in March 1938.
This not only added over 200,000 Jews to the Third Reich’s population -
more than compensating for the 129,000 Jews who had emigrated
prior to 1938 - but it also added a large number of rabid anti-Semites.
Austrian anti-Semitism had long been much more virulent than the
German variation. The difference was caused by the continuing
strength of Catholic religious and cultural anti-Judaism, the rapid
increase of Vienna’s Jewish population after the middle of the
nineteenth century, and the impoverishment of the country as a
result of the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Attacks by
Austrian anti-Semites on Jews, following the Anschluss, or union of
the two countries, were so violent, and the pace of Aryanization so
rapid, that German Nazis came to Vienna to study the Austrians’
techniques. The overall impact of the Anschluss, therefore, was to
speed up the persecution of German Jews.

This persecution persisted through the spring, summer, and fall of
1938. In June 1938,1,500 Jews were sent to concentration camps, this
time simply for being Jews. Sporadic acts of violence were perpetrated
against Jews during the summer. Hitler ordered Goebbels to stop
these activities. However, since no general ban was placed on them,
party activists interpreted the silence as a green light. Between July
and September the German government issued decrees restricting
the employment of Jewish doctors and lawyers. Jewish men were
forced to add “Israel” to their names, and Jewish women had to attach
“Sarah” to theirs. Even before the catastrophe of November 1938,
Jewish capital assets had been reduced by almost 60 percent, from
RM 12 billion in 1933 to only RM 5.1 billion in 1938, even though the
Jewish population had declined by only one-third.

The prewar climax to the persecution of German Jews came in
November. On the 7th of that month a 17-year-old Jew of Polish
extraction named Herschel Grunszpan shot a German diplomat in
the German embassy in Paris. The diplomat’s death two days later

Totalitarian Terror

181

unleashed a ghastly night of looting, burning, and murder commonly
known as Kristallnacht, or “crystal night,” a euphemism (referring to
the shattered glass of the windows of Jewish-owned shops) invented
by the atrocity’s chief perpetrator, Josef Goebbels. Dressed up to look
like a spontaneous outburst of righteous indignation, Kristallnacht
was actually an improvised but by no means spontaneous pogrom
carried out variously by party leaders and by members of the SA, SS,
and Hitler Youth, and even by people with no Nazi party affiliation.
The SA men were the worst, dragging numerous Jews from their beds
and beating them, sometimes to death. When the smoke cleared,
11,200 synagogues and temples throughout Germany (including
Austria) had been burned (see Plate 23); 7,500 Jewish-owned busi¬
nesses lay in ruins; at least 91 Jews had been murdered (according to
official figures); at least 300 Jews had committed suicide; and between
26,000 and 35,000 Jews (one in five Jewish men) had been arrested
and sent to concentration camps - most were released a few weeks
later but not before several hundred of their fellows had died of abuse,
trauma, and exposure. Kristallnacht demonstrated that the Nazis
could carry out their most extreme anti-Semitic policies without fear
of overt opposition from the police, town officials, or other citizens.

Like the boycott of April 1933, Kristallnacht was anything but a
public relations coup. Throughout Germany, foreign diplomats
reported seeing local crowds aghast and ashamed of their government
and their fellow Germans. They were indignant about the destruction
of property at a time when they were supposed to be frugal, and more
recently revelations from private diaries have shown that many
Germans were also disturbed by the immorality of the actions. The
pretense of spontaneity, even though not entirely wrong, was widely
rejected as ludicrous and no one was fooled by the absence of Nazi
uniforms during the action. Many Nazis thought the pogrom was a
cultural disgrace and a blow to Germany’s international image. Only
the most hard-core Nazis and rabid anti-Semites approved of it. In the
United States, previously neutral Americans, including German
Americans, who had previously written off reports of Nazi brutality
against Jews as exaggerated, became staunchly anti-Nazi. These
reports were now taken seriously. However, no government, including

182

Totalitarian Terror

that of the United States, was outraged enough to recall its ambas¬
sador. Some leading Nazis, such as Hermann Goering, the founder of
the Gestapo and commander-in-chief of the German air force
(Luftwaffe), were furious with Goebbels because of the wanton
destruction of property. Goering simply forced the Jews to pay for the
damage by fining them RM 1 billion (equal to about $2.5 billion
today). Kristallnacht was the first and last action of its kind in Nazi
Germany. Further anti-Jewish measures were systematic, “legal” (by
Nazi standards), and often secret.

The November pogrom was essentially designed to accelerate
Jewish emigration from Germany. Indeed, Jews who promised to
leave Germany quickly were released from concentration camps
within a few weeks. Kristallnacht occurred near the beginning of a
new wave of anti-Semitic legislation. Jewish children were expelled
from state schools on November 15 and forced to attend all-Jewish
schools. All Jewish physicians who still had Gentile patients were
allowed to treat only Jews after the end of September 1938. On
November 12, a new law forbade Jews from undertaking any form of
independent business activity. Management-level workers were to be
dismissed from their jobs without any severance pay or pension
rights. Other laws enacted during the next three years prevented Jews
from using parks; attending cultural events like films, exhibitions,
and concerts; owning an automobile; publishing; or even using public
telephones. The laws served their intended purpose. Deprived of any
way to earn a living, Jews hastened to emigrate. Whereas only 23,000
Jews left Germany in 1937, over 35,000 did so in 1938, and another
63,000 fled recently annexed Austria. In 1939 a combined total of
128,000 Jews left the Greater German Reich. These people were the
lucky ones. Those who remained, mostly old people and women,
were soon to be swept away by the Holocaust.

Historians have disagreed about Hitler’s role in the above events.
His habit of not putting his orders in writing has only added to the
mystery. This much can be said with certainty: Hitler, like Stalin,
wanted to avoid direct responsibility for anything that might be per¬
ceived at home or abroad as disreputable. During the anti-Semitic
outbursts in 1933-4 he did not make a single speech in which the

Totalitarian Terror

183

Jewish question was even mentioned. A firm believer in the idea of a
powerful international Jewish conspiracy, he refused to countenance
any anti-Semitic measures while Germany was still militarily weak,
for he was fearful of provoking an international response from myth¬
ical Jewish wire-pullers in the United States, Britain, and France.

By the fall of 1937, however, Hitler was beginning to lose his inhi¬
bitions. At the annual Nazi party rally in Nuremberg in September,
he made a frenzied attack on “Jewish Bolshevism,” one of three
times he publicly attacked Jews prior to the war. It can hardly be a
coincidence that this was about the time when physical assaults on
German Jews and the “Aryanization” of Jewish property began to
accelerate. But just prior to Kristallnacht, he made no speeches and
issued no written orders; following the pogrom he also maintained
his public silence so that he could once again remain aloof from the
events that had taken place. Moreover, this maintained the pretense
of the spontaneity of the violence. Nevertheless, Hitler was at the
very least morally responsible for the anti-Jewish campaign.
Subordinate Nazis were well aware of his opinions concerning the
Jews, and reflected them in their actions. When Hitler thought they
had gone too far, he could and did intervene, but for tactical, not
ethical, reasons.

Meanwhile, the anti-Semitic orgy in Germany found an echo in
Italy, where there were at most only 50,000 Jews, most of them well
integrated. Mussolini’s motivation for introducing a policy of anti-
Semitism over the objections of government officials has been hotly
disputed by historians. On numerous occasions he expressed his
skepticism about “racial science.” He had a Jewish mistress, Margherita
Sarfatti, at times condemned Nazi anti-Semitism, and even gave
German Jews temporary haven. He told a foreign journalist in 1932
that “Italians of Jewish birth have shown themselves good citizens,
and they fought bravely in the war.” 1 Some historians believe that he
may have discovered the political usefulness of anti-Semitism during
his well-publicized four-day state visit to Germany in 1937. Others
think that he gave in to Nazi pressure or was trying to please Hitler

Quoted in Emil Ludwig, Talks with Mussolini (Boston, 1933), 70.

184

Totalitarian Terror

and to strengthen ties between Italy and Germany, although there is
no evidence of overt pressure coming from Germany. Still others
believe that Mussolini had long been a racist as well as an anti-Semite.
In 1930-1, under his leadership, the Italian army deported 100,000
Libyans to a concentration camp where they were left to starve. In
1935 Mussolini was convinced of a Jewish conspiracy in the interna¬
tional opposition to his war in Ethiopia in 1935-6. As a result of that
conquest, as well as of Italy’s possession of several other African col¬
onies, racism appeared to be a logical way to prevent fraternization
between natives and colonial administrators. Antimiscegenation laws
had been enforced in Italian East Africa since 1933 and were intro¬
duced to Ethiopia in 1937.

In any event, the campaign against Italy’s Jews began in July 1938,
with the publication of a Manifesto of Fascist Racism. In September
the citizenship of foreign-born Jews who had become citizens only
after January 1919 was revoked. At about the same time, Jewish stu¬
dents and teachers were banned from state schools and were required
instead to attend Jewish schools. In October the Fascist Grand Council
prohibited Jewish membership in the party. Jews were also expelled
from all civil and military service positions, as well as from
professional, journalistic, legal, cultural, and academic associations.
As a consequence, 98 university professors, or nearly one in 10, lost
their jobs. Now Jews were not allowed to own land, to run businesses
that had more than 100 employees, or to hire non-Jewish servants. A
campaign to purge the country of modern “Jewish” culture, especially
avant-garde literature and textbooks by Jewish authors, also took
place in 1938. Finally, mixed marriages were forbidden and Jews were
forced to change their names to something more “Jewish.” As in the
case of some of the early anti-Semitic laws in Germany, exceptions
were made for war veterans and their families, and for children of
mixed marriages who did not practice Judaism. November saw still
more legislation aimed at deporting foreign-born Jews, and 6,000
Jews did subsequently leave the country.

Aside from the murder of Matteotti, the enactment of the Laws for
the Defense of the Race were the most unpopular action taken by the
Fascist regime prior to its entering World War II, although there was

Totalitarian Terror

185

little open opposition from Gentiles. Only some of the Fascist leader¬
ship and the Fascist university groups, both of which had pushed for
the laws, strongly supported them. Among the general public they
won approval only in Trieste, perhaps because of the strong tradition
of anti-Semitism it had inherited from the Austrian empire, and
perhaps because the city had a relatively large Jewish population.
Otherwise, there was a great deal of public disgust at the legislation,
especially given its close coincidence with anti-Jewish atrocities in
Germany. Even the royal court and some members of Mussolini’s
family objected to the laws, but to no avail. Rightly or wrongly, it was
widely believed that the regime had meekly submitted to Nazi
pressure. Academic and business elites, unlike those in Germany,
were particularly outraged by the laws. Another long-time supporter
of the Fascists, the Vatican, regarded the legislation as a clear violation
of the Concordat of 1929 because it forbade the marriage of Christians
to baptized Jews.

This summary of terror and persecution in the totalitarian regimes
shows that, prior to World War II (but not thereafter), Stalin was in a
class by himself. Whereas he was responsible for fatalities that could
already be numbered in the millions, those who died in Nazi persecu¬
tions totaled at most a few hundred and Mussolini’s prewar victims
amounted to a couple of dozen. Similar comparisons could be made
between the imprisonment of political prisoners in the three totali¬
tarian states. However brutal the Nazi camps were in this period,
most inmates survived the ordeal, as did political prisoners in Italy.

The persecutions in all three totalitarian states were profoundly
self-destructive. Stalin’s persecutions were on such a massive scale
that the very efficiency of the Soviet economy and military was badly
undermined. Stalin was especially eager to get rid of the most senior
members of the Communist party, the Old Bolsheviks. Hitler and
Mussolini went to the opposite extreme as far as party members were
concerned. They tolerated any amount of corruption and inefficiency,
especially from their cronies; only disloyalty could lead to serious
consequences for a party official. As a result, their systems became
much less efficient and public esteem for their political parties

186

Totalitarian Terror

declined steadily. The Soviet and German general public approved of
the purging of party officials, but many Germans and Italians objected
to the harsh measures taken against their Jewish fellow citizens. The
persecution of Jews in Germany and Italy probably did more to
damage the international reputation of the Nazi and Fascist regimes
than the Terror did for the Soviet Union; lack of information about
the latter at the time probably accounts for much of the difference.
The forced emigration of leading Jewish intellectuals and scientists
also had serious consequences for the two fascist countries culturally,
economically, and even militarily. For Mussolini, Fascist racial laws
were also a turning point in the legitimacy of his regime domestically.
All three dictators succeeded in remaining aloof from any negative
public reaction to the use of terror, with the exception of Mussolini in
relation to Matteotti’s murder of in the early years of his rule. However,
the dictators’ continuing personal popularity at home did nothing to
salvage the reputation of their regimes abroad.

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy
and War, 1933-1941

[Hitlers] model was ... nineteenth-century America.

The same mixture of traditional and totalitarian tactics and goals
found in the domestic policies of the totalitarian states can be seen in
their diplomatic and even their military policies during the 1930s and
in the early stages of World War II. None of the dictators, moreover,
was particularly secretive about his goals. All three had delineated at
least the outlines of their foreign policy ambitions - for anyone who
chose to take them literally, which only a few shrewd diplomats did -
in numerous prewar speeches and publications. Mussolini wanted a
new Roman Empire in and near the Mediterranean - which he would
populate with a (presumably) rapidly growing population - and con¬
stantly glorified war. Hitler laid down the outlines of his foreign policy
in Mein Kampf, in which he stated his desire to make Germany a world
power through the conquest of at least large parts of the Soviet Union.
Such a conquest would make Germany economically self-sufficient,

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

188 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

negating any British blockade. There would be no repetition of the
German experience in World War I, when the British blockade resulted
in at least 600,000 civilian deaths. A new German empire would
furthermore make Germany culturally independent of the rising
American colossus. To insure success Hitler planned to form an
alliance with Italy and to avoid a conflict with Britain. Stalin wanted to
extend Russian influence deep into Europe and, if possible, have a ring
of satellite states that would obey his every command. He also favored
the expansion of communist ideology and communist movements
abroad, provided the ideology remained orthodox (in his view) and
the movements remained dutifully subordinate to his commands.

Nevertheless, the actual tactics pursued by the totalitarian dictators
remained for a long time relatively traditional and restrained, thus
fooling many people, both at home and abroad, into thinking that the
dictators had only limited and fairly reasonable ambitions. The
restraint turned out to be temporary and the result not of the modifi¬
cation of long-range objectives, but of the realization by the dictators
themselves that their countries were simply too weak, industrially or
militarily or both, to make aggressive action a realistic possibility
during most of the 1930s. Ironically, as long as they followed policies
of self-restraint they enjoyed substantial and sometimes even spec¬
tacular success. As soon as they felt strong enough to pursue their
doctrinaire totalitarian goals, they were headed for disaster. This
outcome was apparent almost immediately in the case of Italy. It took
a few years to unfold in Germany, and over four decades to do so in
the Soviet Union.

Hitler’s Foreign Policy Strategy

The catastrophic end to the Third Reich should not blind us to the
fact that Hitler was at least superficially successful as a diplomat
throughout most of the 1930s. Like any good diplomat, he knew how
to make a virtue out of a necessity. When he came to power in 1933,
Germany still had little more than the 100,000-man army it had been
allowed to maintain by the Treaty of Versailles. It had no air force at

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 189

all and next to no navy. Its western territories near and to the west of
the Rhine were permanently demilitarized, and it was not allowed to
station any troops in these territories or to build any fortifications,
thus leaving the country exposed to an invasion by France. Even
Poland and Czechoslovakia had stronger military establishments
than Germany for the first several years of Hitler’s rule. Under these
circumstances, Hitler had no reasonable choice but to proclaim his
love of peace. By so doing he weakened efforts by foreign statesmen to
unite against him.

Historians were slow to begin debating Hitler’s foreign and military
goals. Until 1960 it was widely assumed that the Nuremberg Trials
and Hitler’s own statements in Mein Kampf had settled the issue once
and for all: Hitler had laid everything out in his book in the mid-
1920s and then simply followed his own preconceived policy. This
view was challenged in 1961 by the British historian A. J. P. Taylor
who argued in The Origins of the Second World War that Hitler had no
such blueprint and simply took advantage of opportunities as they
came along. This benign view of the Fiihrer at first evoked a furious
response from nearly all professional historians. In time, however,
historians conceded that there was indeed much opportunism in
Hitler’s tactics and that Mein Kampf was far more an outline of his
future foreign policy than it was a detailed blueprint.

Almost no historians, however, have agreed with Taylor that Hitler
had no long-range plans that would inevitably lead to war and, that
the outbreak of war in 1939 was nothing more than an unfortunate
accident. Most historians still believe that Hitler had no intention of
pursuing a peaceful policy any longer than he absolutely had to. As he
himself acknowledged in Mein Kampf: “We must clearly recognize the
fact that the recovery of lost territories is not won through solemn
appeals to the Lord or through pious hopes in a League of Nations,
but only by force of arms” 1

Historians still hotly debate Hitler’s ultimate objectives. No one
believes that he merely wanted to restore Germany’s boundaries of
1914. Hitler himself showed contempt for such an idea, arguing that

Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston, 1943), 627.

190 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

those boundaries had already become inadequate to feed Germany’s
prewar population. He thought that the mere annexation of nearby
German-speaking territories would not solve Germany’s economic
problems, even though he pretended otherwise in the late 1930s. The
real debate centers on what Hitler wanted to do after he had annexed
the territories of ethnic Germans. It is generally agreed that he also
sought Ukraine because of its fertile soil and fairly moderate climate.
But what was to become of Poland, which stood between Germany
and Ukraine? Was it to be conquered and annexed or turned into a
satellite? Hitler remained silent on the issue in Mein Kampf. And
would even the annexation of Ukraine have satisfied him? After he
conquered it in 1941-2, he began dreaming of still broader conquests,
of African colonies, and of an eventual showdown with the United
States, perhaps in his lifetime, perhaps not until the next generation.

It is probably safe to say that Hitler would have continued Germany’s
expansionist policy for as long as he could. His model was not India,
where the British had allowed limited self-rule, but nineteenth-
century America, with the Slavs of the Soviet Union playing the role
of the American Indians. The Soviet people would be brutally con¬
quered and millions of them would be allowed to starve. The racially
valuable survivors would be Germanized and the remainder would be
either killed or put on Indian-style reservations where they would be
closely guarded by SS men carrying a metaphorical rifle in one hand
and a spade (for farming) in the other.

Leaving aside the unimaginable savagery of such a negative utopia,
Hitler’s dream shows that, as in so many other aspects of life, he had
not adjusted to the realities of the twentieth century. Like members of
the pre-World War I generation, he defined power in terms of natural
resources and agriculturally usable land; he had no confidence in
Germany’s ability to raise its agricultural productivity. If those criteria
were valid, however, China, India, and Russia should have been the
strongest countries in the world. Hitler also ignored the fact that since
the Industrial Revolution a nation’s prosperity and power had
depended primarily on the state of its technology. His assumption that
millions of Germans would be eager to move to the windswept plains
of Ukraine was disproved by the fact that during the 1930s Germans

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 191

moved from east to west, not the other way around. Therefore, the
very premises of Hitlers diplomatic and foreign policies were flawed.

Hitler did not simply bide his time between 1933 and the beginning
of his more aggressive moves in 1938 any more than he wasted the
late 1920s when the Nazi party was too weak to seize power. He
immediately began to rearm Germany, although not as rapidly as was
once commonly supposed. He also carried out a steady verbal assault
on the Soviet Union. Both policies enjoyed widespread support at
home and the second also elicited considerable support from abroad,
particularly with conservatives in Britain and the United States.
Rearmament helped solve Germany’s unemployment problem; big
industry and the armed forces were especially enthusiastic.

The timing of Hitler’s accession to power was as fortuitous diplo¬
matically as it was economically. As mentioned, he came to power
about six months after Germany had begun to recover from the
Depression, but it was he who received all the credit. Much the same
was true in diplomacy. Germany’s foreign minister from 1923 to
1929, Gustav Stresemann, had already won a number of important
concessions for Germany. Reparation payments were sharply scaled
back in 1924, and again in 1929. The Locarno Pact of 1925 prohib¬
ited a unilateral French invasion of Germany and allowed the Reich
to join the League of Nations the next year. The Young Plan, signed
just before Stresemann’s death in October 1929, arranged for the
withdrawal of French and Belgian troops from the Rhineland the fol¬
lowing year, five years ahead of the schedule established by the Treaty
of Versailles. In 1932 US President Herbert Hoover proclaimed a
moratorium on German reparations and Allied war debts. These
were all substantial gains for Germany. They were also within the
context of international law and were usually the result of negotia¬
tions; they were not the consequence of German threats nor unilat¬
eral faits accomplis. Stresemann had gone far in re-establishing
Germany’s good name, especially among Americans, who were
warmly received in Germany during the 1920s and even after Hitler’s
rise to power. In so doing he had created a kind of treasury of good
will. It was Hitler, however, not the democratic Weimar Republic,
who made withdrawals from this account.

192 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

Hitler also benefited from the historical debate that raged over the
Treaty of Versailles in the decade and a half following its signing.
Many historians in Britain and the United States, though not France,
had concluded that Germany had been treated too harshly in the
treaty. Hitler himself, in countless speeches, pointed out how
the World War I victors had violated their own principle of self-
determination. Whereas that right had been granted to Poles, Czechs,
Romanians, Lithuanians, and several other European nationalities, it
had been denied to the Germans. Germany wanted nothing more
than to claim the same right for the roughly 12 million German¬
speaking people who lived just beyond its new borders. This was a
powerful argument for which there were no easy rebuttals based on
strictly moral grounds.

The whole Paris Peace Settlement, of which the Treaty of Versailles
with Germany was just one part, had been an uneasy compromise
between idealism and power politics. A number of new nation-states
had been established between Germany and Russia, and between
Finland and Yugoslavia. The Allies, especially France, had enabled
potential friends of the West, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia,
Romania, and Yugoslavia, to gain disputed territories at the expense
of Germany and its World War I partners, Austria, Hungary, and
Bulgaria. However, Germany had been left united, was only partially
and temporarily occupied by Allied soldiers, and, with 62 million
people, was still the second most populous European country after
the Soviet Union. Its industries had emerged from the war unscathed,
leaving it the strongest industrial power in Europe.

Not only did Germany remain a potentially powerful country, but
it also faced neighbors who were unable to agree on a common policy
toward the Reich. France, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, all benefi¬
ciaries of the peace settlement, did not want to make any concessions
to Germany. Britain, not being an immediate neighbor, having
annexed no German territory, still feeling relatively safe behind the
English Channel (especially now that the German navy was at the
bottom of the North Sea), and having been unenthusiastic about the
Treaty of Versailles from the beginning, was much more conciliatory.
Hitler was masterful at playing these four states off against each other.

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 193

As already observed, Hitler was scornful in Mein Kampf about
restoring Germany’s boundaries of 1914. Nevertheless, for many years
he posed as a traditional nationalist who merely wanted to revise the
Treaty of Versailles, a policy which virtually all Germans supported to
a greater or lesser extent. Once its demands for sovereignty and
self-determination had been met, Germany would become a bastion
of peace and stability and a bulwark against the spread of commu¬
nism. Privately, however, Hitler told his senior military officers as
early as February 3, 1933 that Germany’s foreign policy had to be
aimed at conquering Lebensraum in the East, the population of which
would then have to be “ruthlessly Germanized.”

Hitler as “Peace Lover,” 1933-1935

Hitler’s most brilliant diplomatic moves were probably those that
came early in his chancellorship rather than those of the late 1930s, as
is usually asserted. In May 1933 Germany extended the Treaty of
Berlin, a treaty of friendship and neutrality with Russia, which had
first been signed by the Weimar Republic in 1926. Two months later,
the Concordat with the papacy (mentioned in Chapter 6) was signed.
Still more astonishing was a nonaggression pact with Poland signed
in January 1934. The latter, which was in response to a Polish initiative,
was a particularly daring stroke because it appeared to contradict the
opinion of anti-German nationalists in Poland and France who
claimed that Hitler had aggressive intentions and would tear up
Versailles and reannex lost German lands in the east at the first oppor¬
tunity. The pact was all the more surprising and impressive because
Hitler had to overcome a great deal of domestic opposition to con¬
clude any deal with Poland, which had acquired far more German
territory than all of the other neighbors of the Third Reich combined.
In reality, Hitler got something for nothing. Germany was too weak to
attack Poland in 1934 under any circumstances. More important, the
pact contradicted the spirit if not the letter of a Franco-Polish alliance
that had been concluded in 1921. It also seemed to prove to the world
that Hitler was a man of peace, just as his propaganda claimed.

194 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

Meanwhile, Germany had in October 1933 withdrawn from a
disarmament conference that had begun in Geneva, Switzerland the
preceding year, fearing that the proposed supervision of disarma¬
ment would reveal its secret rearmament program. It simultaneously
withdrew from the League of Nations, an organization that Germans
had long viewed, with some justification, as a tool of its former
enemies. The withdrawal from the conference was actually due
more to the German Defense and Foreign Ministries than it was
to Hitler, who tended to be more cautious. But the Fiihrer turned
what could have been a public relations disaster into a triumph by
pointing out, as had the chancellors of the Weimar Republic, that
the Treaty of Versailles stipulated that the disarmament of Germany
was to be the beginning of a general disarmament, something
which had never formally taken place. (In reality, however, the
British and French had drastically cut their armed forces in the late
twenties and early thirties.) All he asked for, Hitler claimed, was
to be treated equitably. As for the League, it had repeatedly ignored
Germany’s complaints about the treatment of ethnic Germans in
Poland.

Hitler grew bolder in March 1935. On March 9 he suddenly
announced the existence of a German air force, which Britain and
France had already suspected but did not protest. He furthermore
claimed that it was already as large as the British Royal Air Force
(RAF), which was a lie. A week later, he used the French decision to
double the length of its terms of military service (to compensate for
its very low birth rate) as a pretext to announce universal conscrip¬
tion and his intention to build a 550,000-man army. The British,
French, and Italian governments all solemnly protested these moves
when they met in the Italian resort city of Stresa in April, but they
took no concrete countermeasures. The French did conclude an alli¬
ance with Russia on May 2, but it was hardly worth the paper it was
written on because it was not followed by any conversations between
the two military establishments. Moreover, the two countries could
aid each other only after taking their complaint to the League of
Nations. Hitler used the alliance to claim that the French had sold
out to the Bolsheviks.

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 195

To restore his reputation as a man of peace, Hitler signed an Anglo-
German Naval Agreement in June 1935. The Agreement theoretically
limited the size of the German navy to 35 percent of the combined
navies of the British Commonwealth. However, if threatened by the
Soviet Union, Germany could have as many submarines as the British.
Once again, Hitler had made a virtue of necessity. As Winston Churchill,
the future British prime minister, later pointed out, the treaty actually
did not limit Germany in any way. Even if it had built ships day and
night, it would not have reached the 35 percent limit until 1942, at
which time it could have torn up the Agreement. In the short run, the
most important consequence was that Anglo-French relations were
soured because the French had not been consulted. Hitler looked rea¬
sonable and peace-loving and the British looked selfish. The Agreement
also encouraged Hitler to think that he could count on the acquiescence
of Britain for his ultimate goal of attacking the Soviet Union.

From Ethiopia to Spain: Fascist Italy at War

It is easy to forget, in light of what happened later, that in 1935 Hitlers
diplomacy seemed almost pacifist compared to that of his Fascist
counterpart, Benito Mussolini. Just four months after Hitler had
agreed to limit the size of the German navy, the Italian army invaded
Ethiopia, a member of the League of Nations.

With some minor deviations, Mussolini’s early foreign policy had
actually been quite cautious. An exception was his coercing Yugoslavia
to surrender to Italy the Adriatic port city of Fiume (Rijeka). Unlike
Hitler, Mussolini had come to power before he had been able to enun¬
ciate his foreign policy goals. Consequently, for several years he
depended heavily on the advice of his professional diplomats. In the
past, Italy’s foreign policy had enjoyed its greatest success when there
had been a European balance of power. No such balance existed in the
first decade of Mussolini’s rule. Great Britain, on whom Italy depended
for much of its coal, controlled the Mediterranean Sea with its navy,
and France’s army and allies made it dominant on the Continent.
Hitler’s ascendance to power offered Mussolini an opportunity to

196 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

exploit a new balance of power, but also entailed the risk that Italy
could be confronted with a dangerous new neighbor should Hitler
succeed in annexing German-speaking Austria.

Motivations are always difficult for historians to decipher, and the
Ethiopian War is no exception. It appears, however, that the Fascist
revolution was growing stale by the mid-1930s. There was little else
that Mussolini could do domestically without alienating one of the
major conservative groups supporting him. Italy was also signifi¬
cantly slower to recover from the Great Depression than either
Germany or Britain. A war against Ethiopia would presumably solve
several problems at once. It would divert attention from the economy,
avenge Italian defeats at the hands of the Ethiopians in 1889 and 1896,
and bring glory to Italy (and especially to Mussolini). All this would
be accomplished by establishing an empire in Africa, and would the¬
oretically provide an outlet for Italy’s excess population, which,
because of immigration restrictions, was no longer able to emigrate to
the United States in large numbers.

Historians are divided as to whether to describe the Ethiopian War
as a milestone on Italy’s road to becoming a full-fledged totalitarian
state or whether it was merely an old-fashioned colonial war, not
unlike those fought by other European powers in the late nineteenth
century. A good argument can be made for either case. Mussolini
made no attempt to disguise his desire to gain a colony, and ridiculed
as hypocritical the opposition of the British and French, who them¬
selves had acquired so many colonies by force.

Yet there were elements to this war that were different from the
colonial wars. Mussolini did not bother to consult with anyone except
the king before starting the war. He exploited every propaganda outlet
to make the war popular with the Italian people - and succeeded.
(Italian Americans were equally enthusiastic. Tens of thousands of
them attended rallies in support of the war and Italian American
women contributed their gold wedding rings to the cause. Support for
Fascist Italy in the Italian American press, unlike the German
American press, remained strong almost until Pearl Harbor.) The
Catholic Church shared in the prowar enthusiasm by blessing depart¬
ing troops. Cardinal Shuster drew a favorable comparison between

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 197

the war and the Crusades. The pope celebrated the occupation of the
Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, as the “triumph of a great and good
people.” 2 Mussolini boasted about how Italy had overcome sanctions
imposed by the 50-member League of Nations (negated in part by
continued US shipments of oil to Italy) which had outraged the Italian
public. The brutal treatment of the Ethiopians both during and after
the conquest foreshadowed, on a very small scale, the Nazis’ treatment
of the Soviet people during the Russian campaign. Among the 750,000
Ethiopians who died in the war were the first generation of school¬
teachers, who were slaughtered in order to prevent the emergence of
an educated native elite - much as Hitler and Stalin were later to do
with Poles and Ukrainians. Other prominent citizens were shot after
surrendering and being promised a pardon. Poison gas was used
against both soldiers and civilians, as well as hospitals marked with
the Red Cross symbol.

For Mussolini personally, the war was both the high point in his
career and the beginning of his downfall. Historians who argue that
Mussolini built a consensus for Fascism - a controversial issue
especially in Italy - find the popularity of this war to be convincing
evidence. The war undoubtedly took his popularity at home to new
heights: for a time he became the leading personality of world politics.
However, the war also gave him a grotesquely overblown sense of
grandeur. If he could withstand the efforts of Britain, France, and the
remainder of the League of Nations to block his conquest, there
seemed to be no limit to the triumphs that lay before him. When his
generals tried to prevent him from intervening in World War II, he
took great pleasure in reminding them of their earlier unfounded
timidity over the Ethiopian campaign.

However, far from being a boost to the Italian economy, the war in
Ethiopia, which took longer than expected, cost a year’s revenue. It
drained Italy’s meager military and industrial resources. The official
end of the war in May 1936 was followed by guerrilla warfare until
Italy lost the colony in 1941. Italian military strength, compared to

2 Quoted in Tracy Koon, Believe, Obey, Fight: Political Socialization of Youth in
Fascist Italy, 1922-1943 (Chapel Hill.NC, 1985), 138.

198 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

that of the other great powers, peaked in 1935. Thereafter it declined
both relatively and absolutely.

Moreover, Italy’s recently enhanced influence depended on a
balance of power between Germany on the one hand, and Britain and
France on the other. The Ethiopian War and its atrocities had alien¬
ated the West and badly damaged Mussolini’s reputation, albeit not
necessarily indefinitely, leading to increasing Italian dependence on
Germany, which had not joined the League in imposing sanctions.
Hence, it was the real beginning of the German-Italian “Axis,” which
prevented Italy from continuing its balancing act.

In the middle of the Ethiopian War, and with the West still angry
over Mussolini’s naked aggression, Hitler decided in March 1936 to
move German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland. Even though
there were many indications of an impending action, the French had
no plans for a military response. They grossly overestimated German
strength and feared that a counterattack would spark a major war in
which France would be isolated. The cautious and nervous Hitler ini¬
tially sent only 30,000 troops into the Rhineland, of which just 3,000
soldiers ventured west of the Rhine, not the 295,000 estimated by
French intelligence.

The consequences of the remilitarization have been fiercely debated
by historians. Some have noted that it changed nothing, since the
French had long since abandoned the idea of invading the territory to
counter any German offensive move. This is true but far too sim¬
plistic, in the opinion of other scholars. French inaction, though
planned, was nevertheless demoralizing to the French people them¬
selves. France’s eastern allies also began to have serious doubts about
their partner to the West. Most ominous of all, Belgium, disgusted by
France’s passivity even when German troops approached its border,
dropped out of the French alliance system and declared its neutrality.
Hitler had also taken the first step in insuring the security of Germany’s
western frontier, which was a prerequisite for an invasion of Russia.

For Hitler personally, the remilitarization of the Rhineland had
consequences not unlike those of the Ethiopian War for Mussolini.
For the first but not the last time in his diplomatic career, he had taken
an enormous gamble and won. Instead of using diplomacy - which

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 199

had an excellent chance of success - and enhancing his stature as a
statesman, he had used force, and had done so against the advice of
his senior military officials. Although he did not yet have the con¬
tempt for his advisers he would eventually develop, he loved to refer
to this episode in later years as a classic example of his superior judg¬
ment. He now made the first big withdrawal from the goodwill
account established by Gustav Stresemann. The Western powers
acquiesced in his actions, thus granting him a huge diplomatic victory
which they had denied the democratic Weimar Republic. Hitlers
victory was not cost-free, however. The West resented the German
dictator’s unilateral action and began to rearm. British armament
expenditures in 1936 were two-thirds higher than those of 1934,
although still only one-half the size of Germany’s.

Only four months after the Rhineland crisis, the world’s attention
was drawn away from Germany once again, this time to Spain. In
July, General Francisco Franco took over the leadership of a conser¬
vative-monarchist rebellion against the left-of-center republican
government of Spain. Mussolini eagerly intervened on Franco’s side
in the ensuing civil war even though Italian troops were still heavily
engaged in Ethiopia. His motivations for this intervention, which
eventually resulted in his committing some 72,000 troops and 5,000
officers, are, again, not easy to fathom but were probably influenced
by the following considerations: he may have been overreacting to
the recent successes of leftist governments in France and Spain, and
he was probably concerned about Soviet aid to the Spanish Republic.
His Germanophile foreign minister and son-in-law, Count Galeazzo
Ciano, helped convince him that Franco would win easily and that
support for Franco would enhance a close relationship between Italy
and Germany, which also supported Franco. Indeed, it was during
the civil war that the “Axis” alliance was cemented. Finally, although
Mussolini was not trying to turn Spain into a fascist state, he prob¬
ably thought that a nationalist right-wing government in the western
Mediterranean would one day help Italy expand its interests at the
expense of the liberal democracies. If so, however, he received no
such promises in exchange for his very considerable assistance to
Franco’s cause.

200 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

In the end, the Spanish Civil War simply intensified the unfavor¬
able trends already begun in Ethiopia. By the time the war ended in
March 1939, Italy had lost 4,000 men, over 700 airplanes, and 9 mil¬
lion rounds of ammunition, in all equal to one-third of its armaments,
which it was unable to replace. It was now more heavily committed to
Germany, which had also intervened in Spain, but on a much smaller
scale. Only a partnership with Germany offered Italy the prospect of
realizing its imperialistic goals (see Plate 24). The Western powers,
which opposed those very ambitions, were more alienated than ever
and largely lost interest in trying to woo Italy back into their camp.
Finally, the Spanish intervention differed from Ethiopia in one major
way: it was not popular with the Italian people. If Mussolini had pre¬
viously established a consensus, it now began to crumble. Hitler, in
the meantime, gained combat experience for the 16,000 pilots and
technicians he had sent to Spain, and quietly continued Germany’s
rearmament while the world’s attention remained riveted on the
Iberian Peninsula.

Austria and Czechoslovakia: Hitler’s First Conquests

Although the Spanish Civil War was at its height in 1937, the year was
otherwise uneventful diplomatically. Hitler attempted no new faits
accomplis and even the persecution of German Jews had not yet
entered its most violent phase. Apart from Spain, the only ominous
event occurred secretly, and its significance is still disputed by histo¬
rians. This incident was the Hossbach Conference, a meeting on
November 5 between Hitler and his senior diplomatic and military
advisers, which has been named for the officer who took the notes.
During the meeting, Hitler, citing Germany’s alleged need for
Lebensraum, outlined several opportunities for German expansion.
At the Nuremberg Trials in 1946 the conference was described by
Allied prosecutors as a “blueprint for war.” This assessment is at best
an exaggeration, since events did not follow the outline Hitler sug¬
gested at the meeting. In it he did, however, specifically mention
Austria and Czechoslovakia as two early targets for expansion. The

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 201

following February he also ridded himself of his conservative foreign
minister, Konstantin von Neurath, and the military leaders who
opposed his plans, surrounding himself instead with adventurers,
gamblers, and ideologues like himself. It strains credulity that all this
happened by coincidence.

The conference also shows that Hitler now thought Germany was
strong enough that he no longer needed to exercise the kind of
restraint he had hitherto displayed. He was also prepared to go beyond
the simple removal of restrictions on German sovereignty, which had
occupied his attention up to then, and implement his policy of gain¬
ing Lebensraum through the use or threat of force. The dramatic
nature of this shift was masked, however, by Hitler’s desire to conquer
at first only German-speaking territory under the guise of
self-determination.

Although Hitler mentioned Czechoslovakia as his first victim in
the Hossbach Conference, it was actually Austria that he invaded first
(see Map 2). The Alpine republic was an ideal target. Its population
was almost purely German-speaking, its economy had never fully
recovered from the breakup of the multinational Habsburg Monarchy
into mutually hostile nation-states, and it had a large and militant
Nazi party. Hitler had learned a painful lesson in July 1934, when he
allowed the Austrian Nazis so much autonomy that they assassinated
the Austrian chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, in a failed attempt to
seize power and unite with Germany. Hitler was widely blamed
around the world for instigating the putsch even though he had
merely tolerated it. Thereafter he kept a firm hand not only on
Austrian Nazis, but also on Nazis in such places as Czechoslovakia,
Danzig, Lithuania, and Denmark, all of whom wanted their ethnic
Germans to be annexed by Germany.

By March 1938, however, Hitler thought that restraint was no
longer necessary in Austria and permitted local Nazis, especially in
the southeastern province of Styria, to operate at will. On March 9, in
a desperate attempt to regain control of the situation, the Austrian
chancellor, Kurt von Schuschnigg, called for a plebiscite on continued
Austrian independence. To deny the Austrian Nazis a chance to
campaign, the plebiscite was to be held only four days later. Fearing,

Map 2 The expansion of German territory and power, 1935-1939. The
map illustrates the enormous success of Hitler’s foreign policy between
the return of the Saar territory to Germany in 1935 and the recovery of the
Memel region from Lithuania in March 1939. Without the loss of a single
soldier, Hitler regained full sovereignty over the previously demilitarized
Rhineland and added more than 11 million people to Nazi Germany’s
population, along with many valuable natural resources, such as coal in
northern Bohemia and iron ore in Austria, both crucial in wartime.

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 203

with some justification, a rigged outcome, and claiming that
Communists were threatening to take over Austria (which was cer¬
tainly not true), Hitler, with the urging of Hermann Goering,
unleashed the German army. Austria, with an army of only 22,000
and abandoned by Mussolini, who had previously posed as the
defender of Austrian independence, offered no resistance and was
quickly annexed.

In many ways, Hitler’s takeover of Austria resembled his
reoccupation of the Rhineland. Both actions took place without
prior negotiations and through the use of force. In both cases the
Western powers lodged formal protests in Berlin and Geneva (the
latter being the headquarters of the League of Nations) but took no
military counteractions. In both cases Hitler got what he wanted and
Germany’s strategic situation was improved. In both cases Hitler’s
popularity at home soared to new heights but his international
standing declined. After both episodes the West decided to speed up
its rearmament. One difference was that the Austrian annexation
was improvised, even though it was part of Hitler’s strategic goals.
Mussolini’s response was also decidedly different. The annexation
was a personal humiliation for the Duce even though he tried to
be as gracious toward Hitler as possible. He had now lost the buffer
between Italy and Germany and was more easily influenced by
German pressure. Interestingly enough, Mussolini was able to regain
some of his lost prestige both at home and abroad by serving as a
peacemaker, not a warmonger, during the next diplomatic crisis.

That crisis, the biggest of the prewar era and the one that brought
Europe closest to war, involved well over 3 million German-speaking
people of Czechoslovakia, who lived mostly along the borders of the
country in a region the Nazis called the Sudetenland. These people
had been awarded to the new Czechoslovak state at the Paris Peace
Conference, mostly to prevent the enlargement of Germany. The
arguments advanced at the time to assign them to the Czechs were
weak and contradictory. The Czechs sought to maintain the historic
and geographic unity of the Bohemian crown lands that became the
western part of Czechoslovakia, but they ignored history and geog¬
raphy when they claimed the Slovaks who had been part of northern

204 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

Hungary for a thousand years. Even economic arguments were
questionable because the Sudetenland contained beer-, lace-, and
glass-making industries, for which the Czechoslovak market was
inadequate, whereas the more important steel industry was entirely
within Czech-speaking areas.

All of these factors made it difficult for either the Czech government
or the West to use moral arguments when Hitler staked his claim to
the Sudetenland on the basis of national self-determination. Had a
European war broken out over the Sudetenland, the British and
French governments would have been asking their soldiers to attack
Germany - the only way the Third Reich could have been quickly
defeated - in order to prevent German-speaking people from uniting
in one country. Throughout history, the fear of negative public
opinion has made most statesmen reluctant to bring their countries
into war when they have not been attacked or when the issues are
not clear. Complicating the problem for the West was the opposition
to war of the British dominions (except for New Zealand). French
conservatives were also against war, fearing that a German defeat
would lead to the spread of communism. Moreover, difficult as it is to
remember in the early twenty-first century, Britain and France had
been far more concerned about defending their worldwide empires
since the end of World War I than they were about a revived German
threat. Finally, the pursuit of national self-interest and balance-of-power
politics, policies discredited by the world war, were still widely
regarded as immoral, especially in Great Britain.

Although there were some legitimate or at least understandable
reasons why the West hesitated to go to war against Germany in the
fall of 1938, their actions are not immune from criticism. Not until
September 16 - less than two weeks before the Munich Conference -
did a British official think it worthwhile to examine the implication of
a peaceful German annexation of Czechoslovakia. Both British and
French military “experts” wildly overestimated German strength
while ignoring the value of the 750,000-man Czech army, which,
combined with the French and British armed forces, far outnumbered
Germany’s Wehrmacht. The British worried about German bombing
of British cities when no such possibility as yet existed. The reports

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 205

simply made it easier for the British prime minister, Neville
Chamberlain, to persuade his cabinet to abandon Czechoslovakia.

Nevertheless, at the end of September war seemed imminent over
the relatively trivial issue of the timing of the occupation of the
Sudeten districts. To head off the impending crisis, Chamberlain
asked Mussolini to persuade Hitler to attend a four-power conference
in Germany to partition Czechoslovakia. Mussolini was happy to
oblige because he was painfully aware that Italy was not prepared to
engage in still another war (see Plate 25). The ensuing Munich
Conference on September 29-30 made everyone except the Czechs at
least temporarily happy. Mussolini became a hero at home and abroad
because he had helped prevent a war - not exactly the epitome of the
Fascist ideology. The British and French, as well as most Germans,
were relieved that they did not have to go to war over an unpopular
issue. The Soviet Union, which was not even invited to the conference,
and was in the midst of its military purge, did not have to fulfill its
treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia (although we know now that it
had no intention of doing so unless the West also intervened). Hitler
had once again proven his generals wrong because they had predicted
that the West would go to war to defend Czechoslovakia. His popu¬
larity at home now rose to unprecedented heights.

Hitler had scored still another diplomatic victory, however,
precisely because he had achieved a traditional and limited goal -
annexation of the predominantly German-speaking Sudetenland - and
he had obtained it without having to fire a shot. The Sudetenland was
a region coveted not just by Nazis but by virtually all Germans as well
(although they weren’t particularly ardent about the issue), and his
justification for the annexation, national “self-determination,” was a
concept first enunciated by the Allies, not the Nazis. Hitler had even
submitted to negotiations at Munich. Had he been willing to stop his
expansionism at this point, there is no doubt that he could have kept
his recent gains.

Spectacular as Hitler’s triumph was, it was not an unqualified suc¬
cess. Far from bluffing, as some post-Munich critics have suggested,
Hitler was in fact angry that Czech concessions had deprived him of
an easy military victory. More important, he had now exhausted the

206 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

tolerance of the West. Chamberlain promised to guarantee the sover¬
eignty of what was left of Czechoslovakia, the first such British
commitment to a central European state since 1756. After their initial
feelings of relief, the British and French eventually stepped up their
rearmament. Actually, British rearmament came in response to public
demand, and Chamberlain saw to it that rearmament was minimal.
The British army envisioned in February 1939 was to be no larger
than the Czech army sacrificed at Munich. When Kristallnacht
occurred only six weeks after the Munich Conference, Nazi Germany
could no longer be considered a normal, albeit authoritarian, state.
British and French public opinion underwent a sea change, and
Germany was seen as a threat to world peace. The outcome at Munich
was also dangerous for Hitler because it caused him to conclude that
Chamberlain and the French premier, Edouard Daladier, were cow¬
ards who would back down when confronted by the threat of force.
Furthermore, it convinced him that his own generals were weaklings
whose advice could safely be ignored.

The Approach of War

The real turning point in Hitler’s foreign policy occurred in March
1939. Up to then he had focused first on removing those clauses of
the Treaty of Versailles that restricted German sovereignty on military
issues, and second on exploiting the principle of self-determination
to annex nearby German-speaking areas. These goals, which were
neither exclusively Nazi nor totalitarian, assured him maximum
domestic support and minimum foreign opposition. By the end of
1938, however, these objectives had been almost completely fulfdled.
Any new expansionism was likely to violate the principles he had
been outwardly following and would unify his foreign opponents.

Such a step Hitler took in March 1939, when he ordered what has
euphemistically been called the “occupation of Prague” but which in
reality was the occupation of all the Czech-speaking areas of what was
left of Czechoslovakia. The Fiihrer, of course, had his pretexts. One
was that the quarter of a million Germans remaining in Czechoslovakia

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 207

after Munich had, allegedly, been mistreated. Besides, Bohemia and
Moravia had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and the Germanic
Confederation and were therefore part of Germany’s cultural sphere.
This time, however, even the optimists and wishful thinkers in the
West were not fooled by lame excuses, and many Germans were also
unenthusiastic about this new acquisition. When the occupation of
Prague was followed eight days later by the occupation of the
Memelland, a district with a 60 percent German-speaking majority
annexed by Lithuania after World War I, what was left of the British
policy of appeasement was all but dead.

Hitler had not entirely abandoned traditional diplomacy - faits
accomplis were hardly unprecedented in 1939 - but he had
abandoned his former high moral ground in favor of virtually undis¬
guised aggression. His earlier diplomatic triumphs, though
sometimes resented, had not precluded still more. Prague did exactly
that. If Hitler had concluded after Munich that Chamberlain and
Daladier were cowards, the Western leaders as well as most of their
people now regarded Hitler as a liar, someone who certainly could
not be trusted to uphold any further agreements. Chamberlain
unilaterally offered to “guarantee” the independence of numerous
eastern European countries including Poland, and both Western
powers once more greatly accelerated their rearmament programs;
in April Chamberlain, again bowing to British public opinion, intro¬
duced the first peacetime conscription law in its history. The road to
World War II was now paved.

The seriousness of Hitler’s overconfidence became obvious at the end of
the last prewar diplomatic crisis, involving the Free City of Danzig. The
city of 400,000 was 90 percent German-speaking but had been severed
from Germany, along with a corridor, to assure Poland of free access to
the Baltic Sea, a loss regarded as a national humiliation by virtually all
Germans even though the new boundaries coincided closely with ethnic
realities. Hitler wanted the city returned to German rule, along with a strip
of land across the Polish Corridor, to permit the building of a railroad and
an autobahn. Ironically, the demand was much less significant in terms
of territory, population, and the balance of power than the annexation
of Austria or the Sudetenland, and equally justifiable on the grounds of

208 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

self-determination. Moreover, Poland was an authoritarian state with a
strong anti-Semitic tradition and armed forces far weaker than those of
Czechoslovakia had been a year earlier. This time, however, the Western
democracies had no confidence that Hitler’s demand would be his last,
and would not be followed by something far less reasonable. Besides,
Chamberlain had already issued his guarantee to Poland, thus making
the Polish government much less willing to negotiate.

Hitler thought he could intimidate the West into surrendering
Poland by concluding a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union.
And the world was indeed astonished when the German government
suddenly announced the signing of such a pact on August 23, follow¬
ing secret German-Russian negotiations. Historians have excoriated
both the British for not concluding an alliance of their own with
Russia, and Stalin for signing the agreement with Hitler. Actually, the
actions of both the British and Stalin were rational, based on what
they knew at the time. Stalin had just completed his decimation of the
Russian officer corps. Chamberlain had every reason to doubt the
efficacy of the Russian armed forces, as well the moral ramifications
of allying with a dictatorship even more brutal than Nazi Germany.
After Munich he also had no moral grounds for objecting to Soviet
appeasement of Germany. However, he hoped that his very public
courting of the Soviet Union would force Hitler to be more concilia¬
tory about his demands on Poland. For his part, Stalin was reasonable
in questioning the benefit of going to war against Germany, a war in
which Russia would be likely to assume a disproportionate share of
the fighting while not being compensated territorially. Hitler, how¬
ever, had secretly promised him eastern Poland and the Baltic States
(Lithuania was included in the package only in mid-September) in
exchange for merely remaining neutral.

Where Stalin himself miscalculated was in imagining that a war
between Germany and the West would develop into a World War
I-type of stalemate, which could then be exploited by the Soviet
Union. Even if victorious, an exhausted Germany would need 10
years to recover before it could attack Russia. In so reasoning, Stalin
was blinded by doctrinaire Marxism that insisted that the fascists
were the tools of monopoly capitalists struggling for markets. He

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 209

completely ignored the Nazi ideology of agrarian expansionism.
In effect, he also abandoned his many left-leaning Popular Front
supporters in the West, particularly in France, by dropping the anti¬
fascist policy he had been pursuing since 1935. Stalin later tried to
excuse the nonaggression pact by claiming that it had given him time
to rearm. There is no evidence, however, that he speeded up Soviet
rearmament after concluding the deal. In the meantime, his ship¬
ments of raw materials to Nazi Germany were invaluable for the Third
Reich’s war production. These exports effectively canceled out the
effects of the British naval blockade of Germany, a strategy that had
been valuable during World War I. Stalin could have rendered an
enormous service to the West, and ultimately to the Soviet Union
itself, if he had simply agreed to join a possible economic blockade
against Germany. At most the pact gave him time to repair some of
the enormous damage he had done to his officer corps.

Hitler’s expectation that the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact
would neutralize the West turned out to be a disastrous illusion. He
was at least correct, however, in thinking that the West would be
unable to give effective assistance to Poland once war broke out. But
he was fatally wrong in assuming that Chamberlain was bluffing
when he warned him that Britain would not make peace with him
once the Polish campaign ended. Overriding the objections of both
Goebbels and the leader of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe),
Hermann Goering, as well as many of his generals, Hitler clung to the
hope that British distractions with the independence movement in
India would prevent it from declaring war and that France would not
enter the fray without its British ally.

For Chamberlain and Daladier neither Poland nor Danzig was the
real issue; it was Nazi expansionism and its threat to the worldwide
status quo. Britain sent no money or arms to Poland in the summer of
1939. Although its military spending had doubled in 1939 over the
previous year, it had no plans to bomb Germany in the event of war.
Likewise, France, its promises to Poland notwithstanding, had no
plans to invade Germany. Allied plans assumed that Germany would
be defeated not in Poland, but only after a long war in which a
blockade would play the critical role. Crucial for this strategy was the

210 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

fresh support of Britain’s dominions which had been lacking at
Munich; for France it was the 76 percent of the population that
favored war if Germany should attempt to take Danzig by force.

The Blitzkrieg Campaigns

Historians are in general if not universal agreement that Hitler wanted
a war with Poland in September 1939. Less apparent is whether he
wanted a major European war at that time. A study of German
armaments production in the year the war broke out does not give a
conclusive answer. Between 1935 and 1939, military spending
increased fivefold, from RM 6 billion to RM 30 billion. Meanwhile,
the percentage of the gross national product devoted to armaments
increased from 8 to 23. Other figures are especially impressive when
compared to those of most other potential belligerents. For example,
by 1938 Germany was devoting 52 percent of its national expendi¬
tures and 17 percent of its gross national product to arms. In that year
of the Munich Conference, it spent more on arms than Britain, France,
and the United States combined. Consumer goods production in
Germany accounted for only 17 percent of total production in 1937-
8, compared to 31 percent in 1928-9, although the former figure was
still a much greater share than in the Soviet Union. The Four-Year
Plan, inaugurated in 1936, was designed to make Germany capable of
waging war in 1940, but not yet a general war.

However, armaments production still had serious shortcomings.
None of the three armed services - army, navy, and air force - was
adequately prepared in terms of research and development or the
accumulation of munitions stockpiles. The Luftwaffe, in particular,
suffered from a dangerous shortage of construction factories, raw
materials, and ammunition. There was not even a coherent program
for the allocation of resources for the armed forces. The army was far
from fully mechanized and was therefore still astonishingly dependent
on horses for its mobility. Some historians have even suggested that
Hitler went to war in order to gain raw materials, although this has
remained a distinctly minority view. The army and the air force were

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 211

preparing for a war they expected to begin in 1943, a date which
Hitler mentioned at the Hossbach Conference in November 1937. As
for the navy, Hitler ordered a major building program for it as late as
January 1939, with a completion date set for 1946. However, he
expected to use it only after the Continent had been subdued. He also
paid little attention to the use of chemistry and physics in warfare. He
was especially indifferent, until it was too late, to nuclear physics.

Nevertheless, Hitler was reasonably well prepared to fight the kind
of war Germany actually pursued between 1939 and 1941. Even
though Germany’s rearmament program was unfinished, Hitler was
well aware of the rapid, albeit belated, rearmament programs of
Britain and France and reasoned that the balance of power would
soon swing against Germany. He had nothing to gain by delaying the
war, and the Germany armed forces could not remain mobilized
indefinitely without damaging the economy.

But Germany’s victories in the first two years of the war were not
due primarily to its early arms buildup. The Fuhrer, borrowing heavily
from the British theorist B. H. Liddell Hart and the German Major
Heinz Guderian, decided, against the overwhelming advice of his
military experts, to create integrated, independently operating
armored divisions and tank armies. These divisions, unencumbered
by stocks of obsolete equipment, which hampered the British and
French, were at the heart of Germany’s brilliant Blitzkriege, or light¬
ning wars, which it fought between the fall of 1939 and the fall of
1941. Their creation was Hitler’s personal responsibility and his
greatest military accomplishment.

The armored divisions and tank armies were only two aspects of a
new German interest in mobile warfare. Interwar military planners in
both Germany and the West were determined to avoid the war of
attrition that had bled both sides white in World War I. Western mil¬
itary experts, with some notable exceptions, belatedly agreed with the
early nineteenth-century German military theorist Carl von
Clausewitz that defense was inherently stronger than offense. Such
thinking led the French to rely heavily on the elaborate and expensive
Maginot Line (a fortified defensive line) near the German border, and
the British to place still more emphasis on the use of a naval blockade.

212 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

The Germans, however, decided that tanks, supported by infantry
and airplanes, would restore mobility.

With its new tactics, tanks, and planes, Germany was parading
through Poland within only about four weeks, killing 70,000 Polish
soldiers in the process while losing only 11,000 men of its own.
Poland’s defeat was certain if it remained isolated. The West made a
desperate situation impossible for the Poles by begging them to stop
their mobilization, in order to allow more time for negotiations, just
before the Germans attacked on September 1. The result confirmed
an old saying of Napoleons, “Order, counter-order, disorder.” Hitler’s
gamble that the West would not invade Germany proved to be all too
shrewd. The French government and military had promised the Poles
in May 1939 that they would begin an offensive no later than the
fifteenth day after a German invasion of Poland. Nevertheless the
French and British armies sat in their trenches assuming that
Germany’s Western Wall was impregnable. What they did not know
was that only four fully trained and equipped German divisions were
behind that only partially completed wall. All of Germany’s tanks and
planes were committed to the Polish campaign. Moreover, by the end
of the campaign Germany had used up 80 percent of its ammunition
supplies and 50 percent of its motorized vehicles and tanks were
unusable. The West had lost a golden opportunity to end the war
almost before it had begun.

Hitler’s success against Poland contrasted with the miserable
performance of Stalin and the Russian army in its Winter War with
Finland between November 1939 and March 1940. After the Finns
rejected a Russian demand for a naval base on the southwest coast of
Finland, the Soviets fomented some border incidents - much as Hitler
had done with Poland - as a pretext for an invasion. Initially, at least,
the attack was a humiliating failure. While the 200,000 Finnish sol¬
diers used white camouflaged uniforms and ski troops to ambush
Soviet columns with devastating effectiveness, the 1 million Russians
suffered from supply problems, unimaginative leadership, and a lack
of coordination between their armed services. The Russians finally
broke through Finnish lines and imposed their original demands, but
not before they had lost around 126,000 men - compared to 50,000

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 213

for Finland - and the respect of the rest of the world, especially that of
the Germans. The effect of the military purges was painfully obvious.

Bizarre as it sounds today, Stalin may have been willing to make
an early and relatively lenient peace with the Finns because of fear
of an Anglo-French intervention in the conflict, an intervention
which the West hoped would impress isolationist Americans, espe¬
cially in the Midwest with its large Scandinavian population. The
early end of the Winter War prevented a Soviet war with the West
with incalculable consequences for the war as a whole.

Nevertheless, Scandinavia became the center of military attention
in April 1940 when Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.
Scandinavia was not part of Hitler’s original strategy. However, the
German navy urged Hitler to invade Norway in order to gain the stra¬
tegic port of Trondheim, from which it could easily attack British
shipping. In addition, discussions in British newspapers about
violating Norwegian neutrality in order to shut off supposedly vital
shipments of Swedish iron ore to Germany by way of the Norwegian
coastline finally persuaded Hitler to issue a directive for the invasion
on March 1, 1940. Germany won another four-week campaign
through the daring use of its air force and small navy. However, the
victory was a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Norway provided it
with submarine bases that were later used with devastating effective¬
ness to impede Allied convoys to Russia. On the other hand, Germany
suffered serious naval losses and thereafter had as many as 400,000
troops tied down in occupation duty in Norway, troops that were
badly needed elsewhere. Without intending to do so, the British had
already succeeded in dispersing German troops into a secondary the¬
ater. Furthermore, isolationist sentiment in the United States declined
significantly as a result of the campaign.

Until the spring of 1940, World War II was hardly even a major
European war, let alone a war on a worldwide scale. Not many people
were surprised by the relatively quick defeat of industrially under¬
developed Poland, and the campaigns in Finland and Norway were
regarded as mere sideshows. People in the West talked about the
“Phony War” while the Germans said that the Blitzkrieg in Poland
had been followed by a Sitzkrieg, or sitting war. All this suddenly

214 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

changed on May 10,1940, the day the Germans launched their attack
on the West.

Even in the almost unthinkable event that Hitler had abandoned
his dream of gaining Lebensraum in the East, it is hard to see how he
could have avoided a western campaign. He was almost certainly
right in believing that time was on the side of the West, which showed
no sign of wanting to end the war. With their control of the world’s
waterways, the Western powers could draw on the resources of most
of the world as well as the manpower of their still undiminished
empires. Hitler also had reason to worry about the heavily industrial¬
ized Ruhr region, which was vulnerable to Allied bombing. Moreover,
he continued to fret that Germany’s technological superiority would
slip, for the British and French had begun their rearmament later than
the Germans. He also had good cause to doubt whether the Soviet
Union would always be friendly and Italy remain helpful.

The campaign in the West in the spring of 1940 is one of the most
remarkable in the annals of military history. Hitler and the Third
Reich managed to accomplish in six weeks what the German emperor
Wilhelm II had been unable to achieve in over four years: the defeat
of France and the expulsion of British forces from the Continent.
Much of the credit belongs personally to Hitler. The German dictator
adopted a strategy, first conceived by General Erich von Manstein, for
an initial diversionary attack through central Belgium, followed by a
larger attack through the dense Ardennes Forest in the southern part
of the country. To succeed, the plan required British and French
troops to drive into previously neutral Belgium. Once they obligingly
did so, 1.7 million French, British, Belgian, and Dutch troops were cut
off from retreat into France after German troops reached the English
Channel. Hitler was also responsible for the plan to seize the vital
Belgian fortress of Eben Emael by using paratroopers who landed on
the fort’s roof and stuffed its air shafts with explosives.

At the same time, Hitler was also to blame for not canceling the
order of General Gerd von Rundstedt, who held back his tanks at
Dunkirk in the mistaken belief that they would be needed later to
defeat the main body of the French army. For once, Hitler was overly
cautious, thus allowing the British to evacuate 338,000 Allied troops

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 215

from Dunkirk. Whereas the British had expected to rescue no more
than one-fifth of their forces they actually managed to save four in
five. However, Germany now had three times as many divisions as
the French army, which was so demoralized that it surrendered
three weeks later, on June 22. Hitler’s popularity was now at an
all-time high. His judgment in economic, diplomatic, and military
affairs seemed to be so infallible that no one dared to question it.
Even this stupendous victory, however, was not cost-free. Stalin
used the German involvement in France to annex Estonia, Latvia,
and Lithuania. In the United States, isolationism was again seriously
undermined.

The subsequent Battle of Britain was a puzzle for Hitler at the time
and has remained one for historians ever since. Was Hitler ever
serious about invading Britain, and if so was an invasion likely to
succeed? The issue of Hitler’s intentions is interesting because of his
earlier attitude toward Great Britain. He admired the sometimes
ruthless way the British had built their world empire. In Mein Kampf
he was also very critical of Kaiser Wilhelm II for alienating the British
prior to World War I by building a large German navy. By contrast,
Hitler declared his intention to seek an alliance with the British. The
Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 and even the Munich
Accord encouraged him to think that such an alliance was possible.
He failed to understand, however, that the British, now under the
leadership of the fiercely anti-Nazi Winston Churchill, would never
agree to his demand for a free hand on the Continent, fearing it
would lead to the end of their own independence. Hitler’s reluctance
to invade and defeat Great Britain was also motivated by his fear that
should the British Empire disintegrate, the Soviet Union would take
over India, Japan would expand in East Asia, and the United States
would acquire Canada.

Most historians now believe that Hitler was serious about invading
Britain, at least between July and September 1940. This decision
entailed both high risks and high rewards. A failed attack would
encourage the United States to aid Britain and would destroy the
myth of German invincibility. A German occupation of Britain, how¬
ever, would make American intervention a virtual impossibility.

216 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

Given that Britain produced far more planes than Germany in 1938-9,
Hitler was unrealistic in thinking that the Luftwaffe could neu¬
tralize the British navy, thus allowing the German army to cross the
English Channel. However, if it had been able to do so it would have
faced only one fully equipped British division early in the summer.
Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering failed to recognize the importance
of bombing British radar stations and airplane manufacturing plants.
But it was Hitler himself, over Goering’s objections, who committed
the fatal blunder of diverting the German air force from its critical
goal of dominating the skies over southeastern England when he
ordered the bombing of London in retaliation for the British bombing
of Berlin. When it became clear that an invasion of Britain was no
longer feasible in the fall of 1940, Hitler had no difficulty in abandon¬
ing Operation Sea Lion in favor of his ultimate dream of conquering
the Soviet Union. In any case he thought the latter operation the
easier of the two objectives.

The Italian Intervention

In the meantime, the fall of France was accompanied by the belated
entry of Italy into the war on the side of Germany on June 10,1940.
The intervention ultimately proved to be fatal for Mussolini and his
Fascist regime, and arguably for Hitler as well. The Axis alliance was
created in October 1936, largely on the initiative of the Italian foreign
minister, Count Ciano. The two governments simply pledged mutual
cooperation on numerous issues. This agreement was then elevated to
the status of a formal offensive alliance, “The Pact of Steel,” in May
1939 even though Italy’s generals were opposed to further dangerous
commitments and Italian public opinion was anti-German. The pact’s
only qualification was that it would not go into force before 1943, by
which time Mussolini hoped that Italy would have recovered from its
recent wars.

It is a bit of a mystery why Hitler agreed to this alliance. He had
earlier told a confidant, Otto Wagener, that “Italy has no war potential
whatever. It has no coal, no wood, no iron, no ore ... And besides, the

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 217

Italian is no soldier, neither on sea nor on land. There is not even a
single battle in modern history in which an Italian army was victo¬
rious over another country’s.” 3 Hitler’s assessment was exactly on
target. Italy proved to be far more of a liability than an asset to
Germany during World War II. It repeatedly forced Germany to com¬
mit troops to secondary theaters; Italy was ultimately invaded by the
Allies because it was a partner of Germany.

So weak was Italy that the British chiefs of staff were actually
divided as to whether it was preferable to have Italy as a neutral or as
an enemy. Italy was not even prepared for a minor war in 1940 even
though between one-third and one-fourth of government spending
in 1939 had been on the military. Mussolini was aware of his country’s
lack of preparedness, as were his military chiefs and the king. However,
he was a victim of his own rhetoric. He had preached the glories of
warfare for so long that he was practically forced to consider neu¬
trality a humiliation, no matter how beneficial it might be for Italy.
Besides, in the atmosphere of June 1940, when Germany appeared
capable of ending the war in a matter of days, Mussolini feared that to
delay intervention would cost Italy the return of Corsica, Savoy, and
Nice, which France had acquired in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. By contrast, General Franco in Spain was shrewd enough to
realize that becoming an ally of Hitler was more dangerous than
remaining neutral.

Italy’s fundamental problem was that it was at best a second-rate
industrial power. Its gross national product, which was less than half of
Great Britain’s per capita, was simply not capable of adequately sup¬
porting the weapons and ammunition needed to realize Mussolini’s
imperial ambitions. An Italian Commission on War Production had
warned Mussolini in early 1940 that Italy would not be able to sustain a
single year of warfare until 1949. Furthermore, it is all too easy to forget
that Italy had nearly exhausted its meager supply of planes and tanks, as
well as ammunition, between the beginning of the Ethiopian War in
October 1935 and the end of the Spanish Civil War in late March 1939.

3 Quoted in Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., ed., Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (New
Haven, CT, 1985), 121.

218 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

Consequently, the Italian army of 1940 was weaker in absolute
terms than the Italian army of 1915. Its best guns had been captured
from the Austro-Hungarians in 1918. Its air force, which had been the
most modern in the world in 1934, was now obsolete. It had only 454
bombers and 129 fighters, nearly all inferior in speed and equipment
to British planes - hardly the 8,500 planes claimed by Mussolini. Its
better planes had been designed to break speed and altitude records,
not to fight wars. The navy was well supplied with battleships, but
lacked the necessary air cover that only aircraft carriers could have
provided. In any case, the navy was reluctant to risk its expensive new
toys in battle; many of them were sunk at their docks by British tor¬
pedo planes. Even more important was Mussolini’s unwillingness to
create a genuine triservice general staff, because such an institution
might have challenged his authority. Consequently, the armed ser¬
vices remained poorly coordinated. Moreover, the army, far from
being Mussolini’s compliant tool, frequently fought against his wishes.
Italy’s most pressing problem, however, was its lack of strategic raw
materials, fuel, and ammunition. Mussolini used these shortages as
an excuse for not joining Hitler in war in the fall of 1939, rather than
pointing out that the alliance was not supposed to be valid until 1943.
Thus he put himself in a servile position from the very beginning of
the war.

A number of controversies surround the actual Italian declaration
of war against France. The conventional view is that the Italian public
was adamantly opposed to intervention. This was generally true prior
to the German campaign in France and Belgium. However, the easy
German victories created a widespread demand that Italy enter the
war before it was too late for Italy to collect its fair share of French
booty. The enthusiasm, which was especially strong among students,
was predicated on the assumption that the war would be short and
victorious. As mentioned earlier, Mussolini’s ambitions included not
only the lost territories of Nice, Savoy, and Corsica, but also Malta,
Tunisia, French Somaliland, and bases on the coasts of Algeria,
Morocco, and Syria. Mussolini’s imperial ambitions did not end there.
He also had his eyes on Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Aden, and Egypt.
Historians are also divided as to whether Mussolini merely wanted to

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 219

declare war or actually to fight one. The latter interpretation appears
more likely, although Mussolini did not anticipate Italy’s participation
lasting more than a few months. Such a war would prove to the Italian
people that they were truly a warrior nation, while the war would be
over before anyone noticed Italy’s lack of preparedness. Continued
neutrality, however, might threaten the cohesion of the Fascist party,
whose only source of unity had been its imperialistic and militaristic
rhetoric. Mussolini had made his policy on war transparent in an
essay written in 1932 in which he proclaimed that

Fascism ... believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual
peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism - born of a renunciation
of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone
brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of
nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it . 4

Mussolini further subordinated himself to Hitler in March 1940,
when he promised to join the war at the opportune moment. Such a
moment appeared to have arrived by June 10, the day the Duce
declared war on the Allies. Although he now had nothing to fear from
the nearly prostrate France, Mussolini forgot that Italy’s security had
long depended on good relations with Great Britain. The British at
this point were no doubt down, but they were definitely not out. This
fact, more than anything else, proved to be Mussolini’s undoing.

Intervention was a failure from the very beginning. Italy’s 28 divi¬
sions gained only a few hundred yards before being stopped by
France’s four divisions. Its feeble effort went largely unrewarded,
though there is some question as to the reason. Hitler’s relatively
lenient armistice terms for France may have been aimed at turning
France into an eventual partner. Given the momentary anger that
many French felt toward Britain in 1940 for having allegedly left them
in the lurch, this expectation was not preposterous. Apparently both
Hitler and Mussolini feared that harsh demands would cause the

4 Quoted in Charles F. Delzell, ed., Mediterranean Fascism, 1919-1945 (New York,
1970), 99.

220 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

French navy to continue the fight alongside the British navy, thus
threatening Hitler’s plans for an invasion of Britain as well as endan¬
gering Italy’s vulnerable coastal cities. As a result, Italy acquired none
of the French territories Mussolini coveted, and he did not think to
ask for the Tunisian port city of Bizerta, which might have secured his
supply lines to Libya later in the war.

The outcome in France was an embarrassment for Mussolini but
not a catastrophe. The same cannot be said for his adventure in
Greece. For many years Mussolini had enjoyed playing the role of the
senior fascist dictator. Indeed, for a time, Hitler was even inclined to
concede him that status, as for example during their visit to Venice in
June 1934. However, Italy’s dependence on Germany during and after
the Ethiopian War reversed their relationship. Consequently,
Mussolini was always eagerly to exploit any opportunity to assert his
independence. When German forces occupied Prague in March 1939,
he felt compelled to occupy Albania the next month. The tiny Balkan
state would make an excellent jumping off place for attacks on either
Yugoslavia or Greece. When Hitler occupied Romania in early
October 1940, he thought it was time to get even by invading Greece.

The circumstances surrounding the invasion of Greece reveal a
great deal about Mussolini’s thinking, or lack of it. Hitler had invaded
Poland on September 1 of the previous year because he wanted to end
the campaign before the fall rains turned Polish roads into mud holes.
Mussolini launched the attack on Greece on October 28, at the
beginning of the rainy season, without consulting Hitler and after just
two weeks of preparation, simply because it was the eighteenth anni¬
versary of the Fascist takeover. None of Hitler’s campaigns thus far
had been as unprovoked and treacherous as Mussolini’s attack on
Greece. At this time, the roads in Albania (where the invasion began)
and northwestern Greece, where they existed at all, were often little
more than cow paths. By comparison, Polish roads had been super¬
highways. Predictably, the autumn rains quickly turned the Greek
roads into quagmires. The cloudy weather also kept the Italian air
force - Italy’s only tactical advantage - grounded much of the time.
Italy’s 100,000-man army (about the size of the Greek army) was
stopped almost immediately and was soon pushed back deep into

The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941 221

Albania. Instead of regaining some of Italy’s lost prestige, the fiasco
lost what little prestige Mussolini and the Fascist regime still retained.
It marked the last time that Italy was capable of taking the initiative in
the war and the beginning of the end of Fascism.

Greece was perfectly capable of handling Italy on its own, but Great
Britain insisted on coming to its aid, starting in November 1940.
Hitler was now confronted with the prospect of having his only
important ally totally humiliated. The British air force sank half the
Italian fleet at Taranto and threatened to gain a foothold in the Balkans
from where it could attack oil fields in southern Romania, which were
vital to the German cause. On April 6 Hitler took matters into his own
hands, invading both Greece and Yugoslavia and, within three weeks,
driving the British - who had to transport their soldiers and equip¬
ment to Greece by ship, in contrast to Hitler’s ability to use rail - once
more off the Continent. Mussolini was rescued from defeat but not
from complete humiliation and dependence. His Greek fiasco earned
him the contempt not only of the Allies, but also of the Italians and
Germans. Hitler had scored another quick and impressive victory, but
now still more of his troops were tied down occupying much of the
Balkans, where they were soon also faced with guerrilla warfare.

The campaign in Greece, which ended in early June 1941, with the
German capture of Crete, marked the end of the first part of World
War II in Europe. To a large extent it also marked the end of tradi¬
tional warfare. The Greek campaign had been an old-fashioned war
between gentlemen, with honor given and accepted by both sides.
The Germans even insisted that Greek officers keep their swords after
surrendering. Nothing of the sort was imaginable in the rapidly
approaching war in Russia.

As long as diplomacy and warfare remained relatively traditional,
both Axis powers were fairly successful. Hitler enjoyed not only suc¬
cess, but also goodwill in his early treaties with Russia, the Vatican,
Poland, and Great Britain. He lost the goodwill but remained success¬
ful when he moved more aggressively to seize Austria and the
Sudetenland, simply because the West regarded these goals as
traditional, limited, and morally justified. However, he exhausted

222 The Era of Traditional Diplomacy and War, 1933-1941

the patience of the West and provoked the acceleration of their
armaments when he violated his own ostensive principle of self-
determination by occupying Prague. Subsequently, the West was not
prepared to make peace with Hitler after the Polish campaign. At the
same time, Hitler’s conduct of the war well into 1941, with the partial
exception of the seizure and occupation of Poland, was restrained
enough to prevent the intervention of the United States and to
discourage the appearance of resistance movements, as will be seen in
Chapter 9. Mussolini had not won any foreign friends for himself
when he attacked Ethiopia in 1935, but the world could still see that
conflict, at least in part, as a traditional colonial war which did not
merit military intervention by the great powers. Mussolini committed
political suicide when he fell victim to his own Fascist propaganda
about the virtues of warfare by involving himself in a war that he
could not win. In June 1941 Hitler demonstrated that he had learned
nothing from the Duce’s criminal folly.

Total War, 1941-1945

The Fuhrer cast aside all inhibitions.

Despite the spectacular military victories Hitler had achieved by the
middle of 1940, and would win during the first half of 1941, he was no
closer to his goal of Lebensraum and economic independence than he
had been when the war began. The conquest of the Low Countries and
France, with their dense populations, did not open up land for German
colonization; and their heavily industrialized areas were of only limited
value to Germany because they were unable to maintain even their
prewar production owing to the British blockade. Furthermore, the
Nazi regime could only persuade 6,000 German families to settle on
lands confiscated from the Czechs instead of the 150,000 families they
had anticipated. Nor did more than a few hundred “racially pure”
Dutch and Scandinavians show any interest in moving to conquered
lands in what had been Poland. Even ethnic Germans from the Baltic
States could be persuaded to move to conquered lands in Poland only

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

224

Total War, 1941-1945

by improved rations, tax incentives, and salary bonuses. Therefore, by
June 1941 Germany was actually more dependent on Soviet natural
resources, especially oil, than it had been in 1939. Its chronic shortage
of oil and rubber often made its military reliant on horses for transport
instead of trucks. Making matter worse, Britain remained undefeated
and was only getting stronger thanks to stepped-up American
assistance. The Soviet Union, in Hitler’s estimation, was the easier
target in 1941. Britain, and probably the United States, would be dealt
with later, after Germany had conquered the Soviet Union’s vast
resources.

Until the fourth week of June 1941, World War II had, for the most
part, been fought in a fairly conventional way. To be sure, Poland was
an exception where the Nazis had already killed some of the Polish
intelligentsia and had deported 128,000 Poles and Polish Jews by the
spring of 1940. But even these atrocities did not approach the geno-
cidal character of the post-June 1941 period. German bombers had
destroyed central Rotterdam in May 1940. British bombers had initi¬
ated the deliberate bombardment of German civilians in August 1940,
but few German civilians were killed before 1942. The Luftwaffe
destroyed much of Belgrade at the start of the German invasion of
Yugoslavia in April 1941. Otherwise, for nearly 22 months the war
had been “conventional” and relatively free of atrocities, especially the
intentional killing of civilians. Traditional discipline had sufficed to
keep German soldiers in line. When they occasionally crossed that
line and engaged in looting or rape, they were punished by their
officers.

Aside from Hitler’s enormous miscalculation in starting the war to
begin with, his management of the fighting had been rational - given
his goals - and at times even brilliant. He had erred in letting so many
Allied troops escape his grasp at Dunkirk and in allowing his emo¬
tions to get the better of him in retaliating against the bombing of
Berlin. The failure of the Battle of Britain was a clear setback, but the
foremost British military historian of the twentieth century B. H.
Liddell Hart believed that without American assistance Britain would
eventually have been strangled by German submarines. Hitler

Total War, 1941-1945

225

undoubtedly acted rationally in making every effort to keep the
United States out of the war, even tolerating US aid to Great Britain
and a number of deliberate American attacks on German submarines
in the summer and fall of 1941.

Hitler’s early successes rested on three foundations: Germany’s
early lead in rearming; its Blitzkrieg tactics, which came as a complete
surprise to the Western allies; and that Hitler had to fight on only one
front at a time - each of his campaigns had been followed by a long
respite during which German industries were able to resupply the
army with stocks of new weapons and ammunition. Hitler also
managed to acquire a number of small allies for Germany, including
Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, and Finland, by ful¬
filling their dreams of independence or by helping them to regain lost
territories (although they did not share his ideological goal of
Lebensraum). Most important of all, by exercising self-restraint, he
had managed to keep both the United States and the Soviet Union out
of the war.

June 1940 to June 1941 was the last period in which Hitler was
able to take the strategic initiative. It turned out to be a year of
missed opportunities. Had he followed the advice of his famous
general Erwin Rommel, he could easily have taken North Africa
and the Near East, where he would have encountered a friendly
anti-British and anti-Jewish Arab population. The British would
have been unable to intervene in Greece and there would have been
no need for Germany’s Balkan campaign and the subsequent dis¬
bursement of occupying forces. Germany would also have acquired
all the oil that it needed. By extending his conquests into Iran Hitler
could have threatened the Soviet Union’s oil production in the
Caucasus later and cut off a supply route used by the Soviet Union’s
Western allies after the German invasion of the Soviet Union.
Hitler, however, was an extreme Eurocentrist. When he finally did
send six new divisions to North Africa at the end of 1942, it was to
rescue Mussolini and maintain the prestige of the Axis alliance, not
because he suddenly realized the strategic significance of the area.
For Hitler, the Soviet Union was the grand prize. It is unlikely that

226

Total War, 1941-1945

he ever considered other regions to be more than prerequisites or
sideshows standing between himself and the acquisition of the
fabled Lebensraum in the East.

Hitler Turns East

For the last half-century and more it has appeared obvious to casual
observers of the Russian campaign, code-named Barbarossa, that
Hitler’s decision to invade was doomed to fail. The population of
the Soviet Union, at 183 million, was more than double the 83 mil¬
lion ethnic Germans of the enlarged Third Reich. More important,
however, the size of the USSR was more than 20 times that of
Germany, even after its annexation of Austria, the Sudetenland, and
large parts of Poland. European Russia alone was eight times the
size of France. The front, which was 1,300 miles long at the start of
the campaign, nearly doubled in length once the Germans had pen¬
etrated deep into the Soviet Union, thus thinning out the ranks of
the Wehrmacht and lengthening supply lines. Blitzkrieg tactics that
had worked so well in other parts of Europe where distances were
finite and campaigns brief, had allowed plenty of time for the main¬
tenance of equipment, especially planes. The four-year war in Russia
provided no such breathing spells. Furthermore, as Napoleon had
already discovered, Russia’s winters were bitterly cold and its roads
primitive. Moreover, its railroad tracks were wider than those of
central and western Europe, all factors that were impediments to an
invader.

Nevertheless, Hitler’s idea of the German chances for victory in
Russia was not as overoptimistic as is commonly supposed. Germany,
after all, had defeated Russia in World War I even though it had been
engaged in fighting simultaneously on several other fronts, especially
in France. Shortly before the start of the German invasion in 1941,
Stalin had virtually destroyed his officer corps, and the Russian army
made a miserable showing in Finland, a country with about 2 percent
of the Soviet population. Russian industries were more productive
than they were in 1914, but so were Germany’s. Russia’s territory was

Total War, 1941-1945

227

vast, but offered few natural barriers to an invader. Moreover, Hitler
was far from alone in his optimism. His General Staff estimated that
Germany would be able to occupy a line running from the lower Don
River through the middle Volga to the Northern Dvina within 9 to 17
weeks. These areas contained so many of the factories and farm lands
necessary for Russia’s war economy that their capture would render
further resistance impossible. Even this German prediction was con¬
servative compared to the British estimate that the campaign would
be over in 10 days and the American expectation that it would last
one to three months.

The problem with Hitler’s thinking was not so much his rational
calculations, but his irrational prejudices. The Soviets’ biggest weak¬
ness, according to the Fiihrer, was that they belonged to the inferior
Slavic race. The Russians were “Redskins,” whom he regarded as
being dominated by the still more inferior “Jewish Bolsheviks.” The
only real state-building elements in Russia had been the Baltic
Germans, and they had been driven from power by the Bolshevik
Revolution. The present situation in Russia, therefore, represented a
unique opportunity to gain Lebensraum at relatively little cost. In
other words, it was primarily his Nazi ideology, especially its racism,
that caused him to underestimate badly the resistance powers of the
Soviets. Beyond that, the German General Staff lacked information
on how many reserves the Russians were capable of calling up from
the depths of their country. Hitler was so confident of victory that
he made no effort to persuade the Japanese to attack eastern Siberia
until January 1943, when Japan was heavily engaged in war with the
United States. He also ordered the reduction of German armaments
production on the eve of the attack; in July, when the campaign was
far from won, he redirected armament production for an expected
conflict with the United States. As a consequence, by December
1941 production was actually 29 percent less than it had been in
July. Not until the spring of 1942, when his best chance for victory
had already passed, did Hitler make an all-out effort to speed up
production.

While his primary motivations for invading the Soviet Union were
to gain Lebensraum with its raw materials, and to rid Europe of

228

Total War, 1941-1945

“Jewish Bolshevism,” Hitler had other reasons as well. He managed to
talk himself into believing that his invasion was really a pre-emptive
strike. It is true that the Russians took advantage of the bulk of the
German army being in France in June 1940 to militarily occupy and
annex the Baltic States as well as northern Bucovina in Romania. The
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact had merely assigned the Baltic
states to the Soviet sphere of influence without defining exactly what
that term meant. And it had not mentioned northern Bucovina at all.
Moreover, Stalin concentrated Soviet troops in a menacing way on
the Soviet-German demarcation line in central Poland, in spite of an
earlier promise to Hitler that he would not do so. However, German
military leaders learned of the Soviet buildup only in June, shortly
before the German invasion and long after Germany had begun its
own preparations for an offensive. The Russian foreign minister,
Vyacheslav Molotov, also showed an indiscreet amount of interest in
Finland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey when he visited
Berlin in November 1940.

Hitler also feared, or so he claimed, that Britain was fighting only
in the hope of an eventual alliance with the Soviet Union. Ironically, it
was the German invasion of Russia that brought about that very alli¬
ance. Hitler also disliked being dependent on the Soviet Union for
many of Germany’s imports of raw materials. Stalin had cut back
shipments every time he thought the Germans were in trouble, as in
early 1940, but had been punctual in the last few months before the
German invasion in 1941. Overall, Germany benefited from this
trade far more than the Soviet Union. It is again an irony that those
supplies were cut off, rather than insured, by the German invasion. In
one respect Hitler was probably right: if ever the Soviet Union were to
be defeated, it would be in 1941. Its growing industrial and military
strength would make such an adventure far more difficult, if not
impossible, in the future.

Hitler kept the world’s attention focused on the German bombing
of Britain during the winter of 1940-1, while he began to shift
troops to the east. By February, 680,000 German soldiers were sta¬
tioned in Romania and more were transferred to the east during the

Total War, 1941-1945

229

Greek campaign. By June, there were just over 3 million Axis soldiers
poised to invade Russia, but the number was at best only equal to
the size of the Soviet army and may actually have been smaller.
In any event, the German armed forces were less powerful than
those that had invaded France two years earlier. The ratio of German
to Soviet forces contradicted military doctrine which assumes that
an attacking army must be something like three times as numerous
as the defenders.

Stalin’s Preparations for War

If Hitler’s preparations for the Russian campaign were slapdash and
grounded on the illusion of Slavic inferiority and an underestimation
of the Red Army, Stalin’s efforts were based on outmoded tactics and
a desperate desire to appease Hitler. Military spending in the USSR
had increased from 3.5 percent of the national budget in 1932 to 32.5
percent in 1940 (a figure roughly comparable to Nazi Germany and
far in excess of armament spending in either the United States or
Great Britain), and its army had grown from 1.4 million in 1937 to 5.4
million in 1941. In the latter year the Soviets had 10,000 planes, twice
as many as the Third Reich. During the Second Five-Year Plan,
defense industries were enlarged two and a half times faster than
civilian industries. The problem, however, was not spending or
quantity, but quality. The Soviet Union’s most serious deficiency was
its lack of trained officers and the timidity and lack of imagination of
those who had survived Stalin’s purge. In the mid- 1930s it had led the
world in the mechanization of its armed forces. However, the nation’s
foremost proponent of motorized warfare, General Mikhail
Tukhachevsky, had been the first victim of the military purge, whereas
Kliment Voroshilov and Semyon Budenny, both firm believers in the
continuing importance of horse cavalry, had been spared. On the eve
of the German invasion in June 1941,75 percent of the army officers
had been in active service for less than a year. Stalin also refused to
invest in computers or any technical planning aids. Modern weapons,

230

Total War, 1941-1945

which had been designed and tested, had not been put into mass pro¬
duction before the war broke out, and few soldiers or pilots had been
trained in their use.

Stalin had also committed an incredible blunder in dismantling the
so-called Stalin Line of fortifications, just east of the pre-1939 Soviet
border, despite the opposition of some of his advisers. It had stretched
for over 700 miles, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, and had been
built at a huge cost during the 1930s. It was to be replaced by 2,500
fortifications along the new Soviet border. But construction of the
new fortifications began only in early 1941; by June only about 1,000 of
the new sites were fully equipped with heavy artillery. The remainder
only had machine guns. All of these fortifications were easily overrun
by the Germans on the first day of the campaign. Stalin completely
ignored the advantages of an in-depth defense. The old fortifications
could have been used as staging areas for a counteroffensive against
tired German troops. However, the very idea of deliberately giving
ground and utilizing the inherent advantages of defense never entered
Stalin’s mind. Some historians have recently argued that Soviet forward
deployment suggests that Stalin was planning a preventive strike or
even an offensive of his own, but there is no documentary evidence
to support this view. What can be said for sure is that Soviet armed
forces were prepared for neither a defensive nor an offensive war
on the eve of the campaign. They were not even as well prepared for
war as they had been in 1939, Stalin’s claims to the contrary
notwithstanding.

For Stalin, even the suggestion of defensive plans and retreats was
tantamount to treason and defeatism, and those who proposed such
tactics were unceremoniously dealt with as traitors. Consequently,
there were no contingency plans for strategic withdrawals, even
though they had been the traditional means by which Russia had
defeated earlier invaders. Nevertheless, the evacuation of factories
was successful despite being chaotic and often based on privileged
status. Soviet troops were not even equipped with maps of their own
terrain. In case of attack, Stalin, as well as his High Command, thought
only in nineteenth-century military terms of immediately taking the
offensive. Consequently, he stationed 170 of his 203 divisions and half

Total War, 1941-1945

231

the army’s fuel reserves only a few miles from the new border. Soviet
planes were parked wing tip to wing tip, making them easy targets for
the German air force, as were Soviet tanks which were painted in
bright colors.

Like Mussolini and Hitler, Stalin was a captive of his own
dogmatic ideology. A German attack on the homeland of socialism
would necessarily be followed by uprisings of outraged proletar¬
ians in the rest of Europe. The fact that nothing of the sort
happened in 1918 did not seem to faze him. He was also blinded
by his conviction that Hitler would not attack the Soviet Union in
the immediate future. By May and June of 1941, his willingness
to appease Hitler by continuing vital shipments of raw materials
to Germany while ignoring the German military buildup on his
western border, including the building of rafts and pontoon
bridges within sight of Soviet soldiers, made Chamberlain and
Daladier look hawkish.

Stalin’s last and most grotesque blunder - an error of truly gargan¬
tuan and even criminal proportions - was ignoring innumerable and
specific warnings of an impending German attack. Probably no leader
in world history was so well informed of enemy plans as Stalin,
although much of the information he received was contradictory.
One historian has calculated that the Soviet leader received no fewer
than 84 separate warnings that came from his own intelligence ser¬
vice, British intelligence, the British prime minister Winston
Churchill, President Roosevelt, and German Communists. On May
19 the German ambassador to Russia, Count von Schulenburg, who
had previously tried to dissuade Hitler from the invasion, told the
Soviet deputy foreign commissar V. G. Dekanozov the exact date of
the German invasion. When the news reached Stalin he dismissed it
as “disinformation.” In some cases Stalin had people shot who brought
him such unwelcome news. One hundred and eighty-five deep pene¬
trations of Soviet air space by German reconnaissance planes - 91 of
them in May and June - as well as reports of a massive buildup of
German troops near the Soviet border, were likewise ignored by the
all-powerful and all-wise Russian leader. Stalin even refused to order
the most basic steps for combat readiness to avoid “provoking” the

Map 3 World War II in Europe, September 1939-June 1941.

234

Total War, 1941-1945

Germans. If anyone in the Soviet Union was a “wrecker” and an
“enemy of the people” - to use two of Stalins favorite expressions - it
was Stalin himself.

Stalin’s refusal to believe the many warnings of an impending
attack undoubtedly reveals his extreme mistrust of anyone’s judg¬
ment except his own. It also shows his unwillingness to admit that
his efforts to appease and indeed even to aid Hitler for nearly 22
months after the start of the war had been worse than useless because
they had resulted in a relatively stronger Germany. Nevertheless, if
we examine the military and diplomatic situation as it existed in the
late spring of 1941 Stalin’s actions become at least somewhat
intelligible.

Stalin rejected the warnings - which he had been hearing since
the summer of 1940 - because he was convinced that they were an
attempt, especially by Churchill, to drag him into a war with Hitler
two years before he thought Russia would be prepared for such a
conflict. A number of events lent at least some plausibility to this
conclusion. June 1941 was one of the many low points in Britain’s
struggle with Germany. The British had been expelled from Norway,
Belgium, and France in June 1940, from the Greek mainland in
April 1941, and from Crete in mid-June. They had also already suf¬
fered numerous defeats in North Africa. Indeed, Churchill’s survival
as prime minister was in some doubt after the fiasco in Crete. Stalin
was doubly suspicious of Churchill because the British leader
provided no evidence of an impending German attack and obvi¬
ously needed all the help against Hitler he could get. Therefore, the
more warnings Stalin received the more the paranoid and
Machiavellian dictator was convinced that they were phony. At
worst, he thought, Hitler was merely using a military buildup to
make new diplomatic demands. He was convinced that Germany
would not attack Russia earlier than 1942. Ironically, the only
warning that Stalin took seriously was a letter from Hitler dated
May 14, five weeks before the invasion, in which Hitler told Stalin
not to allow himself to be provoked if some German generals launched
an unauthorized attack.

Total War, 1941-1945

235

The Russian Campaign in 1941

At four o’clock on the morning of June 22, just after the last Soviet
supply train had passed into German-held territory, the German army,
or Wehrmacht, launched its massive invasion of the Soviet Union. The
attack inaugurated a campaign that involved more soldiers on both
sides than were engaged in all the other fronts of the war put together.
Almost immediately, General (later Marshal) Georgy Zhukov phoned
Stalin to inform him that the Germans were bombing Soviet cities.
Two hours later Stalin finally gave the order to resist; another seven
hours passed before a general Soviet mobilization began.

Stalin disappeared from public view for the first 11 days of the
German invasion, emerging only on July 3 to deliver a radio address
to the Soviet people. What he was doing all this time has long remained
a mystery to historians. The usual explanation is that he was immobi¬
lized by a deep depression or a nervous breakdown. Newly declassified
documents, however, have revealed that even though he was depressed
he was busy holding meetings from early in the morning until late at
night. Hence Stalin’s immediate reaction to the invasion was probably
more one of embarrassment than of depression.

Thanks to Stalin’s refusal to take the strategic defensive in 1941,
Soviet armies suffered some 4 million dead between June and the end
of October, and at least another 2 million soldiers taken prisoner by
the Germans, half a million of them at the Battle of Kiev in early
September. By the end of the war 5.7 million Soviets had become
POWs, of whom only 2 million survived, in part because the
Wehrmacht had made no provisions for such huge numbers of pris¬
oners (see Plate 26). Within days, three-fourths of the Soviet air force
were destroyed on the ground and many other planes were shot down
in the air. So massive was the German destruction that the Luftwaffe
commander called it “infanticide.” In one week the German army was
halfway to Moscow, slowed only by rains and the inability of supplies
to keep up with combat troops. By the end of July, the Russians had
lost 17,000 tanks and 8,000 planes, equivalent to almost their entire
inventory when the campaign began in June. The Germans, for their

236

Total War, 1941-1945

part, had also suffered more casualties in one month than in all
previous campaigns combined and were still far from their ultimate
objectives.

Russian officers were shocked by Stalin’s complete indifference to
Soviet losses, which were nearly four times greater than German
casualties for the whole war. If a Russian unit was surrounded and
captured, but later escaped, Stalin regarded its members as deserters
and had them either shot or consigned to labor camps. A similar fate
awaited the Russian prisoners of war who endured the horrendous
conditions in German POW camps. Stalin regarded them as traitors
and refused to allow the International Red Cross to help them. Only
15 to 20 percent of the survivors were allowed to return directly to
their homes. As for unsuccessful generals, Stalin ordered them to
return to Moscow, where they were court-marshaled and shot on the
same day, a practice to which not even Hitler resorted. Russian gen¬
erals soon learned that it was better to attack again and again, even if
they suffered huge losses, than to break off the attack and be consid¬
ered lacking in determination.

Meanwhile, even when the German advance seemed to be pro¬
gressing far better than expected, problems began to appear. The
Russian army, while suffering grievous losses, had not disintegrated
as Hitler and the Wehrmacht leadership had expected; it was a
situation for which no contingency plans had been developed. By the
end of July the three Wehrmacht armies in the north, center, and
south needed to wait for fresh supplies of weapons and ammunition.
Stalin began to use the same scorched-earth policy that Tsar Alexander
I had employed against Napoleon to prevent the invader from scav¬
enging for food. Meanwhile, for almost a month, from late July until
August 23, Hitler and his generals wasted vital time debating their
primary objectives while much of the German army was marching
and countermarching. Such indecision was the result of not working
out precise objectives before the campaign began. Hitler finally per¬
suaded his generals to postpone the drive on Moscow until most of
Ukraine was captured. However, when the attack on the Russian
capital resumed in early September, Moscow had been reinforced and
the Germans realized that they were about to face the Russian winter

Total War, 1941-1945

237

without proper uniforms or adequate amounts of antifreeze. This
time the mistake was the Wehrmacht’s, not Hitler’s, because the
Luftwaffe and the elite Waffen-SS were well supplied with winter
equipment. Good progress was nevertheless made by the Germans
until fall rains turned Russian roads into pigpens.

The widespread belief, perpetuated by German generals after the
war, that the failure to take Moscow was caused by the lateness of the
German invasion in June, Hitler’s hesitations in August, snowfalls in
October (the earliest in living memory), and freezing temperatures in
November and December was based on the questionable assumption
that Moscow could have been taken earlier in a matter of a few weeks,
and that, once taken, Russian resistance would have ended. A year
later, the Germans failed to take Stalingrad after a five-month siege.
Although Moscow, the political, industrial, and transportation hub of
the Soviet Union, would have been a worthy prize for the Wehrmacht,
there is also no reason to assume that the Russians would simply have
quit if the city had fallen. They had certainly not done so when
Napoleon conquered the city in 1812. Big cities were the fortresses of
the twentieth century. Because the Germans reached within 12 miles
of the Kremlin in early December does not mean that the city was on
the brink of falling (see Map 3).

Ultimately, the Germans not only failed to capture Moscow but
were also pushed 50 to 150 miles back by a Russian counterattack.
This action was made possible when Stalin, who had learned on
October 4 that the Japanese intended to attack the United States, not
the Soviet Union, transferred 33 divisions from the Manchurian
border, where they had earlier clashed with Japanese troops, to
Moscow. If there was a strictly military turning point in World War II
it was on December 6, when the Russians began their counteroffen¬
sive, one day before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Hitler himself
had been well aware, before the Russian campaign began, that his best
chance of victory was in 1941. With 23 percent of the German sol¬
diers who had invaded Russia in June dead, wounded, or missing in
action even before the beginning of the Soviet counteroffensive, that
chance had now been squandered. By the end of 1941 Germany had
lost 357,000 soldiers, 300,000 on the Eastern Front. These losses could

238

Total War, 1941-1945

be made up in 1942 only by drafting teenagers, middle-aged men, and
armament workers.

Hitler and the Untermenschen

No greater mistake can be made by students of the Russo-German
war than to imagine that it was won or lost because of purely military
decisions. Hitler might well have lost the campaign even if he had
chosen all the right targets. If the Russian army had not defeated him,
the immense size of the Soviet Union, together with the implementa¬
tion of guerrilla warfare, might well have done so. In the long run,
however, it was a political decision, based on Nazi ideology, that
proved to be Hitler’s undoing far more than any tactical mistakes he
may have made.

Von Clausewitz put it very succinctly in his book On War, in which
he wrote that “if we only require from the enemy a small sacrifice,
then we content ourselves with aiming at a small equivalent by the
War and we expect to attain that by moderate efforts.” 1 Hitler did the
exact opposite in Russia. Already in November 1940 he had told his
leading generals that the approaching war in the East would be a “war
of annihilation.” The Soviet Union would be turned into a vast colony
which would enable the German population to grow to 250 million
people in 70 to 80 years and provide Germany with unlimited food
and natural resources. Those Russians who survived the onslaught
would be reduced to the status of slaves and would be taught just
enough German to follow orders.

By demanding everything of the Soviets - the complete destruction
of their country both politically and materially - Hitler achieved the
near impossible: he turned Stalin into a hero and probably preserved
the hated, corrupt, and inefficient Soviet system for another two gen¬
erations. Simultaneously, he also created an ideologically improbable
Anglo-Soviet alliance which was joined a few months later by the
United States. In his desire to create a great European if not a world

Carl von Clausewitz, On War (Harmondsworth, UK, 1968), 400.

Total War, 1941-1945

239

empire, Hitler forgot that all the great empires of the past, for example
the long-lasting Roman Empire and for a time even Napoleon’s
empire, had offered the conquered and subject peoples political
autonomy and a better life than they had known. He offered the Soviet
people only slavery and death.

Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union was arguably the single
most important one of the twentieth century. The irony is that he had
an opportunity to be the greatest liberator in world history. While he
was busy with the Battle of Britain Stalin was ruthlessly imposing the
Soviet system - collectivization, the seizure of private property, and
the killing or deportation of indigenous intellectuals - on his newly
annexed territories in the west. Consequently, many people in the
Baltic states frantically tried to pass themselves off as Germans in
the summer of 1940 rather than fall under Soviet domination. After
the German invasion hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Latvians,
Lithuanians, and Ukrainians actually welcomed German troops as
liberators and several hundred thousand Soviet citizens joined the
Wehrmacht. No doubt tens of millions of Russian peasants would
have joyfully embraced the opportunity to return to their confiscated
private farms. Hitler could have dissolved the Communist party and
created a band of dependent states running from Finland to the
Caucasus, which would willingly have looked to Germany for protec¬
tion against a possible revival of Soviet power. His top ideological
adviser, Alfred Rosenberg, himself a Baltic German, in fact urged
such a course on Hitler. But the Fuhrer never even considered it as an
option, except in the Baltic states themselves, where relatively
moderate policies enjoyed considerable success.

In keeping with his policy of annihilation, Hitler ordered the exe¬
cution of all commissars and 100 Russians for every German soldier
who was killed by partisans in the occupied territories. But the sight
of starving Russian POWs being shot while marching through
Ukrainian towns caused onlookers to lose all sympathy for the
German invaders. They now began to believe that their government’s
propaganda was actually true, and that the German invaders intended
to abuse them even more cruelly than Stalin had. By the end of
August, partisan resistance to the invaders was beginning east of

240

Total War, 1941-1945

Russia’s pre-1939 borders; by the end of the year, the Soviet population
overwhelmingly supported the regime. German soldiers reacted to
partisan activity by fighting even more furiously. A vicious circle of
mutual atrocities ensued that dragged on for nearly four years. In the
meantime, Stalin became a national hero almost out of necessity. He
was the only person who could possibly lead the country to victory.

It may be objected that Hitler was merely being true to his
philosophy in treating the Soviet people like Untermenschen, or
“subhumans.” To some extent, of course, this is true. His more
moderate handling of the Baltic peoples was the consequence of their
not being Slavs. He had been able to set aside his racial prejudices in
treating the occupied Czechs with some moderation and in turning
the Slavs of Slovakia and Croatia into allies. His occupation policies in
Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and France were probably
milder than Napoleons and were restrained enough to prevent serious
resistance movements from arising before 1943, when it was obvious
that the war had turned against Germany. Therefore, one is left with
the conclusion that it was Hitler’s racism and obsession with making
Germany an economically self-sufficient world power, plus his
growing belief, in the euphoric summer months of 1941, that restraint
was no longer necessary as a tactical device, that led him to discard all
caution and to pursue a policy of the utmost brutality.

A lesser known part of Nazi cruelty was the regime’s determination
to ethnically cleanse through starvation between 31 and 45 million
people in the conquered territories, in addition to the Jews. Ironically,
the very scale of this ambition made it a practical impossibility. There
simply were not enough Germans to prevent all townspeople from
finding food in the surrounding countryside with the exception of a
few large cities such as Leningrad and Soviet prisoners of war.

The same thinking and timing pertained to the Jews. It was also
around July 1941 that Hitler apparently ordered, or at least tolerated,
the Holocaust of the Jews to enter its most lethal stage, with the
construction of extermination camps in areas previously belonging
to Poland. It is doubtful whether a single comprehensive decision to
kill the Jews was ever made. After the fall of France Nazi leaders
had seriously considered deporting all European Jews under their

Total War, 1941-1945

241

control to Madagascar, a plan first conceived by the Poles before the
war. However, such a plan depended on the total defeat of Britain
and its navy. The picture had changed in 1941 when the Soviet
Union’s 2.4 million Jews were in German-occupied territory along
with the majority of Europe’s 11 million Jews. The Nazis could also
assume that the smoke and noise of battle would make it easier
to camouflage their extermination policies since any news of the
killings could be explained away as vicious rumors or justifiable
retaliations for partisan resistance. Indeed many Germans, and even
Jews, who heard stories of mass killings in the East were inclined to
believe that they were merely wartime atrocities, or old-fashioned
pogroms resembling those that had occurred in late imperial Russia.
When told of the mass murders by their media as early as the summer
of 1942, the British and the Americans refused to take such reports
at their face value. Rumors of mass extermination in gas chambers
seemed beyond belief.

Hitler’s attitude toward Jews was not even consistent. He argued
before the invasion of Russia that the time was ripe to attack because
Jews were a disintegrating factor in the Soviet state. If that were true,
they should have been left to continue their allegedly subversive work.
After the invasion began, he argued that the Jews should be killed
because they were the backbone of the Russian resistance. The
Holocaust was also counterproductive because it killed many hun¬
dreds of thousands of Jews, such as metal workers, who had useful
skills in the war industries. Hitler was still careful to keep his role in
the Holocaust a secret and pursued it with as much deception as pos¬
sible. An open policy of mass murder would have given the Allies a
propaganda gift and would have shocked most Germans.

By enslaving Soviets and exterminating Jews, Hitler was burning
his own bridges and those of everyone associated with his atrocities.
For all of these people, there was no turning back. Presumably, this
knowledge would tie his followers ever closer to him - as often it
did - and inspire them to keep fighting for their very survival. A com¬
promise peace with either Stalin or the Western powers was now
impossible even in the unlikely event that Hitler might ever have been
temperamentally so inclined. It was not just leading Nazis, however,

242

Total War, 1941-1945

who increasingly felt that their fates were tied to the Fiihrer. The
closer the Red Army came to the Third Reich the more ordinary
Germans believed that they had no choice but to continue fighting;
but they were now fighting for Germany’s very existence, not for
National Socialism. Support for Hitler, which had been declining
since the winter of 1941-2, was close to nil by early 1945.

Hitler and Stalin as War Lords

Deciding to carry out a ruthless war of extermination was not the
only error Hitler committed in 1941, although it was probably the
biggest. He was just as stubborn as Stalin about not taking the
strategic defensive. So when 100 Soviet divisions, including the 33
transferred from the Manchurian border, attacked German lines
near Moscow in December, he ordered his soldiers to fight in place.
He finally relented and allowed some retreats after January 15
which may have prevented the Soviets from achieving any decisive
breakthroughs. Many historians credit Hitler’s determination with
preventing a rout, which might have driven the Germans out of the
Soviet Union almost as quickly as they had invaded. Unfortunately,
Hitler drew the conclusion that all Soviet offensives should be
countered in the same inflexible way. As in the winter of 1941-2,
he would eventually allow retreats, but only under less favorable
conditions than would have been possible when first proposed by
his generals. For Hitler, victory was no longer a matter of pragmatic
calculation but of willpower and fanaticism.

More concretely, Hitler now made himself commander-in-chief of
the army after becoming the minister of war in 1938. His new status
put him in charge of both tactics and grand strategy. Like Mussolini,
he had absurdly overloaded himself with responsibilities, but in the
process he had also deprived himself of scapegoats in future defeats.
His top officers became mere pawns, unable to take independent
action based on their professional training. Instead they became
much like Soviet generals had been up to this point. Hitler managed
to retain their loyalty, partly through his magnetic personality, partly

Total War, 1941-1945

243

by intimidation, and partly with huge bribes. Those top generals who
failed to reach his unrealistic expectations could expect to be dis¬
missed or reassigned, but not shot. However, he did not hesitate to
issue death warrants for junior officers.

Hitler’s weakest features now became more obvious than ever: his
grotesque overconfidence and his resentment of opposition from
subordinates even when he knew these men’s views were objective
and correct. His armaments minister, Albert Speer, later wrote that
the more catastrophic events became the more convinced Hitler was
that everything he did was right. Hitler, Speer said, absolutely refused
even to listen to bad news. These characteristics grew ever more exag¬
gerated with time. Furthermore, from this point on, none of these
character traits were balanced by the professional judgment of
his senior officers. During December 1941 and January 1942, he
dismissed those generals who had objected to some of his earlier
policies. By the war’s end he had dismissed half of the officers who
had been generals in 1939. They were usually replaced by men
who told Hitler what he wanted to hear, thus contributing to his unre¬
alistic optimism in the second half of the war.

Modern technology almost conspired to make Hitler’s control of
the German army all the more total. With his headquarters usually in
East Prussia, hundreds of miles from the front, he was able, by tele¬
phone, Teletype, and radio, to keep in constant communication with
every front. Consequently, Hitler denied local commanders any
initiative even though they, and not he, were fully aware of the terrain,
roads, and weather conditions. All he had were his maps and his
determination. Although Hitler’s constant interference was undoubt¬
edly detrimental to the German army, his surviving generals in the
postwar period also found it a useful excuse for their own mistakes.

Hitler still had some positive characteristics as a commander,
which were all the more remarkable considering he had never
attended a military academy or even so much as led a platoon in
World War I. He had a subtle sense of surprise and was a master at
psychological warfare. He was better informed about military history
and weapons technology than many of the generals with whom he
matched wits. Consequently, he wisely encouraged the development

244

Total War, 1941-1945

of several important new guns and tanks. His practical experience
as a front-line soldier enabled him to understand military litera¬
ture, which he continued to read during the war. He certainly had
imagination, eloquence, dedication, willpower, and nerves of steel, all
characteristics of a successful commander.

Hitler’s negative qualities as a leader increasingly outweighed his
positive ones, however. Like Stalin, he had no empathy for the
suffering of the German soldiers on the front and never bothered to
solicit the views of enlisted men. He was equally ignorant of (or indif¬
ferent to) the plight of civilians - two other characteristics he shared
with Stalin - because he never bothered to visit the ruins of bombed-
out cities, in part from fear of assassination. More specifically, he
failed to follow two important rules of strategy starting in 1941: cor¬
rectly selecting the primary target and deploying the army in such a
way as to realize the first objective. The second rule could hardly be
followed as long as the German army was spread out from western
France to the steppes of Russia. By November 1943, there were
177,000 German troops in Finland, 486,000 in Norway and Denmark,
1,370,000 in France and Belgium, 612,000 in the Balkans, and 412,000
in Italy, in addition to the 3.9 million on the Eastern Front fighting
5.5 million Russians. By attempting to hold on to everything, he
ultimately lost everything.

Although Hitler’s policies became more ideological and less
pragmatic as the war progressed, his decision to declare war on the
United States on December 11, 1941 - like Stalin’s refusal to heed
warnings of an impending attack - was not the mad dog act it has fre¬
quently been made out to be. For all practical purposes a state of war
between the United States and Germany already existed. In November
1939, two months after the start of the war, the US Congress lifted its
arms embargo which had existed since the Neutrality Act of 1937,
thereby permitting the sale of war supplies to Britain and France. In
March 1941 Congress agreed to the “lend-lease” program whereby
the United States traded old ships for British naval bases. On August
14, President Roosevelt and Winston Churchill signed the Atlantic
Charter, a declaration of principles for a future peace settlement -
following the “final destruction of the Nazi tyranny” - that amounted

Total War, 1941-1945

245

to an informal alliance. Then in September, Roosevelt announced
that the United States would shoot on sight Axis ships in waters con¬
sidered essential for American defense. Hitler was not naive about
potential American military strength, as has so often been suggested.
He had bent over backwards to avoid a conflict with the United States
in 1941, but he believed that a declaration of war against the United
States would enable German U-boats to cut off US aid to Britain. He
also hoped that Japan would keep the United States busy in the Pacific
in 1942 while he completed his conquest of the Soviet Union.
Thereafter, Germany would have the resources to fight both the
United States and Britain.

At almost exactly the same time that Hitler was abandoning his ear¬
lier restraint and pragmatism and becoming more and more rigid and
doctrinaire, Stalin was gradually moving in the opposite direction. He
remained completely indifferent to Soviet casualties throughout the
war; consequently, the ratio of Soviet military casualties was 3.7 times
greater than that of Germany. As late as May 1942 Stalin insisted on an
offensive near Kharkov which resulted in the loss of another 240,000
soldiers. Nevertheless, even in 1941 he was beginning to show signs of
realism and a willingness to listen to his generals. While Hitler was
cursing his generals and calling them idiots and cowards, Stalin was
holding meetings, listening to battlefield reports, studying maps,
asking difficult questions, and allowing his generals to argue among
themselves before he made up his own mind. After Stalin ordered
about 20 of them to be shot, the worst fate that the remainder might
suffer was to be demoted, dismissed, or sent to a penal battalion. Stalin,
unlike Hitler, was no military strategist, but in time he at least had
enough sense to stop pretending to be one. The great Soviet victories
at Stalingrad and Kursk in 1943 were planned and implemented by his
generals, but he coordinated the strategies of others and allocated
industrial and agricultural resources. For the first and only time in his
career he paid more attention to the army than to the secret police.
Stalin also finally came to realize that discipline and self-sacrifice
could not compensate for bad strategy and tactics.

Stalin soon moved to minimize the influence of communist ide¬
ology. For example, in the early months of the campaign, Soviet

246

Total War, 1941-1945

propaganda had already replaced the theme of fighting for the
Communist party with a nationalistic call to defend the mother¬
land. From then on, and to this day, the Eastern Front is known
in Russia as the Great Patriotic War. In the name of efficiency, the
economic and military authorities were freed from political con¬
trols and allowed some initiative. By October 1942 political
commissars were subordinated to commanders rather than the
other way around, although Stalin continued to spy on his officers.
Political speeches at workplaces were reduced or eliminated alto¬
gether. Stalin even allowed for more freedom of religion and
received the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan
Sergei. Antireligious propaganda ceased and antireligious organi¬
zations were dissolved in 1941. The clergy said prayers for Stalin,
and churches, many of which had previously been closed, were ren¬
ovated and filled for the duration of the war. All in all, Stalin tried
to give the impression that the bad old tyrannical days were gone
forever, and that victory would be the beginning of a new era. But
as soon as the fortunes of war began improving in 1943, the cult of
Stalin was given a new emphasis, political controls tightened, and
journalists put back on shorter leashes. The appeal to nationalism
and patriotism, however, continued.

In economic matters as well, Stalin showed that he could be a ratio¬
nalist. He saw the necessity of moving more than 1,500 industrial
plants, along with 16 million workers, east of the Urals before they
could be overrun by the Germans. Even so, total industrial production
did not regain the 1940 level until 1944, but armaments production
had already reached an index of 224, with 1940 equaling 100. Part of
the reason for the economic recovery was that Stalin was not content
with having women stay at home. By 1943 women comprised 57 per¬
cent of the workforce, up from 38 in 1940. Over 1 million women, or 8
percent, also served in the Soviet armed forces by 1945.

The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late August 1942 to the
end of January 1943, perfectly illustrates Hitler’s increasing dogma¬
tism and Stalin’s greater pragmatism. Stalingrad (today’s Volgograd)
was undoubtedly an important city, being the third largest industrial
center in Russia. Strategically, its capture by the Germans would have

Total War, 1941-1945

247

cut off rail and river traffic along the Volga between the oil fields of
the Caucasus and the population and industrial centers of north¬
western Russia. What Hitler did not seem to realize was that the
capture of any point along the Volga River in this region would have
accomplished the same purpose - and at infinitely less cost. Hitler,
however, was obsessed with conquering the city that bore his rival’s
name. His intentions were so obvious that he lost the element of sur¬
prise. Once German troops were in Stalingrad the Luftwaffe became
almost useless as an offensive weapon because bombing and strafing
would be as likely to kill German soldiers as Russians.

Hitler’s greed and inability to decide on a primary target also wors¬
ened an already dangerous situation. His initial plan was to concentrate
on Stalingrad, a dubious decision because the Russians would not
have been able to reinforce the much more important Caucasus
isthmus. Major successes early in the summer, however, caused Hitler
to become overconfident and lose patience. On July 31, even before
German troops reached Stalingrad, he ordered several divisions to
drive directly into the Caucasus and sent still others north to aid in
the siege of Leningrad. The fighting in Stalingrad created a long
exposed northern front that was weakly defended by Germany’s
poorly equipped Hungarian and Romanian allies, who would have
preferred fighting each other to fighting the Russians. On November
19 Stalin ordered a massive counterattack in the area, catching the
Germans completely by surprise, cutting off their troops in Stalingrad
and leading to their surrender two months later. When it was all over,
the Axis forces had seen 150,000 of their men killed and another
90,000 taken prisoner. The Russians lost even more men - 400,000
killed - but the German drive to the east had been stopped for good.

Stalingrad was not quite the decisive turning point it has been
made out to be. Hitler’s decision to annihilate the Russian people, the
Soviet counteroffensive which began on December 6, 1941, and the
United States’ entry into the war the next day were all more impor¬
tant. It is not even true that no more German victories followed
Stalingrad. The Germans defeated the Americans at Kasserine Pass in
Tunisia in February 1943, and the Russians near Kharkov in March.
The peak success of their submarine campaign also came during the

248

Total War, 1941-1945

first three weeks of March. The Germans even launched a major
offensive against the Russians at Kursk in July, in which Soviet losses
of men and equipment were far greater than their own. But German
casualties on the Eastern Front, even though only about one-fifth
those suffered by the Soviets, were unsustainable because of the
Reich’s smaller manpower.. Stalingrad’s importance was more
psychological than military. After that (costly) victory, Stalin became
more relaxed and benign toward his generals, loading them with
honors. For the Germans, Stalingrad caused an enormous loss of
popular confidence in the regime and its propaganda, in part because
Hitler had made Stalingrad the symbol of the 1942 campaign and the
Nazi press had predicted a great victory. German generals were also
much less confident about the strategy Hitler was ordering them to
carry out.

Stalingrad and Kursk completed the role reversals of Stalin and
Hitler. Kursk was the last time the Nazis took the offensive in Russia.
It also was the first time that Stalin was wise enough to deliberately
go on the defensive even though his troops outnumbered the
Germans by 1.9 million to 900,000. After Kursk, Hitler, like Stalin
before him, committed German soldiers to the front before they
were adequately trained. It was now Hitler who hated to go over to
the defense and stubbornly looked for ways to resume the offense.
Liddell Hart wrote in his History of the Second World War that the
German situation after Stalingrad need not have been hopeless if
the Germans had fallen back to prepared defensive positions, for
example along the Dnieper River, and had Hitler allowed local com¬
manders to use flexible defense techniques. Hitler actually did
permit this tactic in the Baltic, where the Germans were able to hold
their own until 1944 despite being outnumbered six to one. But
elsewhere he was loath to give ground in 1943, even temporarily,
every bit as much as Stalin had been in 1941. Therefore, German
losses in the last two years of the Eastern Front were unnecessarily
high, even though they were still not as high as Russian casualties
caused by costly frontal assaults.

Hitler followed the same philosophy on every front, rejecting the
advice of his generals for timely withdrawals and consequently

Total War, 1941-1945

249

suffering needlessly heavy losses. In North Africa he denied Rommel
the few divisions he needed in 1941 to conquer Egypt and the Near
East. Then, when Rommel urged him to pull out of the area altogether
following the German defeat at El Alamein in the fall of 1942, Hitler
instead increased the German contingent in a hopeless attempt to
avoid an embarrassing defeat. The reinforcements simply meant a
larger haul of prisoners for the Allies when the Germans were trapped
in Tunisia in May 1943.

The Fall of Fascism

The capture of 130,000 Axis soldiers (60,000 of whom were Germans)
in Tunisia hastened the downfall of Mussolini. His popularity had
been declining ever since his intervention in Spain and then more
rapidly after his disastrous invasion of Greece in October 1940. In the
spring of 1941 Italian forces were driven out of East Africa including
Ethiopia, which had been conquered with so much fanfare only five
years earlier. That Italy had been able to stay in the war at all was
purely because of repeated German assistance. Few people appreciate
being dependent, and the Italians were no different. The meticulous¬
ness, strict discipline, and frequent lack of tact displayed by some
German soldiers also did nothing to endear them to their Italian
allies. Nor did German soldiers and civilians have much respect for
Italy by 1943. Fascist propaganda, which attempted to convince the
Italians that they were a militaristic people, fell flat.

As for Mussolini, he repeatedly asked Hitler to make peace with the
Russians so that the Axis could concentrate elsewhere, but Hitler
continued to refuse. Most of the time, Mussolini, who frequently suf¬
fered from depression and was in poor health, lost track of general
policy and his duties as supreme commander, and concentrated
instead on minor details. Prior to several summit meetings with
Hitler, he resolved to tell the Fiihrer that Italy had to withdraw from
the war, but each time the stronger-willed Hitler convinced him that
the war could still be won. Mussolini’s pride was also a problem. In
May 1943 he turned down Hitler’s offer of five divisions because he

250

Total War, 1941-1945

did not want the world to see how dependent on Germany he was,
and also because he feared increased German domination.

Ultimately, however, it was the beginning of the Allied bombing
of Italian cities, food shortages, casualties on the Russian Front, and
finally, the loss of Sicily in July 1943, which brought down the Fascist
regime, after nearly 21 years in power. The defeat in Tunisia had
deprived the Axis of some of its most battle-hardened troops; Italy
had 500,000 soldiers involved in occupation duty in the Balkans and
almost a quarter of a million on the Russian Front. These troops had
never been used for an Italian attack on the British-held island of
Malta, which, if successful, would probably have preserved Italy’s
oldest colony, Libya, for a time. Italian industrial production, lack¬
ing adequate coal and oil to produce weapons, had actually declined
by 35 percent between 1940 and 1943 and, as mentioned, no general
staff existed to coordinate the three military services and avoid
competition between them. By late 1942 Mussolini publicly and
privately said that the Italian people had failed him - not the other
way around. Like Hitler, he could never admit to having made
a mistake.

The end came on the night of July 24-25,1943. By then Mussolini
no longer had the support of the king, army, police, populace, or
even most politicians. Under pressure from several moderate Fascist
leaders who feared the consequences of a military defeat, he called a
meeting of the Fascist Grand Council, which had not met since
before Italy’s entry into the war in 1940. No one could have guessed
the outcome of the meeting, and Dino Grandi, the former Italian
ambassador to Great Britain, arrived at the meeting armed with gre¬
nades, in case the Duce ordered the arrest of his opponents. In a
two-hour monologue Mussolini discussed the course of the war in
great detail, taking credit for the few Italian successes and blaming
defeats on his generals and the Italian people as a whole, who, he
asserted, were unwilling to stand up and fight. After a nine-hour
discussion the Council voted 19 to 7 to ask the king to restore the
powers of the Parliament, the Grand Council, and the king himself.
Although the vote did not mention Mussolini by name, it clearly
showed that the Duce’s own senior colleagues no longer had

Total War, 1941-1945

251

confidence in his dictatorship. It also demonstrated that, in contrast
to Stalin, Mussolini had not taken the trouble to eliminate all his
potential rivals, and had never developed a bodyguard comparable
to Hitler’s SS to protect him. When he met with Victor Emmanuel III
at five o’clock on the afternoon of the 25th, the king informed him
that the war was lost and that he, Mussolini, was being replaced by
Marshal Pietro Badoglio, a “hero” of the Ethiopian War. Upon leav¬
ing the palace, Mussolini was arrested and imprisoned. By midnight
of the same day the entire Fascist party, along with its affiliate orga¬
nizations, had disintegrated. Of the party’s 4 million members, none
made a serious attempt to resist the collapse. For two days the Italian
people celebrated Mussolini’s downfall with wild demonstrations
and the destruction of his portraits and statues.

Mussolini’s overthrow clearly reveals the difference between his
regime and the totalitarian dictatorships in Germany and Russia. In
Italy there were still two institutions, the Fascist Grand Council and
the king, which, however shadowy they might have been, continued
to exist and to provide an alternative source of legitimacy once
Mussolini lost his popularity and even his will to rule. Hitler and
Stalin had devoted much of their careers to making sure that no sim¬
ilar institutions existed in their countries.

Unfortunately for himself, Mussolini did not stay imprisoned for
long. He would have preferred to remain retired for the rest of his life.
However, in September, he was “rescued” from a supposedly secret
prison at a ski lodge at Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi mountains by 40
German paratroopers. He was put back in power, if it can be called
that, by Hitler, who threatened to treat Italy like an enemy and to
destroy the industrial north if he did not collaborate. For the next 19
months Mussolini headed the phantom Italian Social Republic, better
known unofficially as the Salo Republic, for the village on Lake Garda
in northern Italy where it was headquartered. Now even the pretense
of equality with Hitler was gone. All of Mussolini’s appointments to
his own government had to be approved by the Germans. He claimed
that he was staying in power only to protect the Italian people from
Germany, but he could not even prevent the Third Reich from annex¬
ing the German-speaking South Tyrol along with Trieste, both of

252

Total War, 1941-1945

which Italy had acquired from Austria in 1919. Nor could he prevent
Italian workers from being shipped off to German factories, or over
7,000 Italian Jews from being deported to Nazi extermination camps.
He was able to maintain his position only with the presence of German
troops and 200,000 Italian soldiers, who spent most of their time
fighting anti-Fascist partisans.

The Salo Republic, which controlled the ever shrinking part of Italy
not yet occupied by Allied armies, differed radically from Mussolini’s
earlier regime. For starters, it had no real capital, no constitution, and
no diplomatic recognition except from Germany and its few remaining
allies. In many respects, Mussolini reverted - probably sincerely - to
his early socialist philosophy, now that he no longer had to appease
the Roman Catholic Church, the monarchy, or industrialists. The
Duce was also a changed man personally. Now over 60, he was in poor
health and visibly tired; he was also much more modest and cour¬
teous than before. He no longer wore gaudy uniforms or pretended to
be infallible. However, because his regime enjoyed almost no popular
support, he was forced to act ruthlessly against his many domestic
opponents. Among his targets were those Fascist hierarchs, including
his own son-in-law, Count Ciano, who had voted to oust him in July
1943. The five who remained in northern Italy were tried for treason
and shot in January 1944.

Mussolini’s dismissal as prime minister was followed by secret
negotiations between the Allies and Marshal Badoglio’s government,
which resulted in Italy’s unconditional surrender and subsequent “co¬
belligerency” alongside the Allies. Just as Hitler had predicted a dozen
years before, Italy turned out to be more useful as an enemy than as
an ally. For example, there was now no need to supply Italy with
energy - that was the Allies’ responsibility - and nearly 1 million
Italian soldiers, who were taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht, were
now available to work in German factories. The military campaign in
Italy, which lasted from September 1943 until the end of April 1945,
also tied down twice as many Allied troops as Germans because the
narrow and mountainous Italian peninsula clearly favored the
defense. Consequently, the Allied Italian campaign did not conclude
until Germany itself was on the verge of total collapse. The end came

Total War, 1941-1945

253

for Mussolini on April 28, 1945, when he was captured and shot by
Communist guerrillas as he was attempting to flee to the north in
disguise.

The German Home Front

During the war, Hitler’s influence on the domestic scene in Germany
was considerably less than his influence on military affairs simply
because the latter consumed nearly all of his time after the start of the
Russian campaign. Nevertheless, what he failed to do could often have
as much import as what he did do. His attitude toward rearmament,
for example, was far more relaxed than was assumed by the Allies at
the time. Although Germany clearly did begin rearming sooner than
Britain and France, not to mention the United States whose army
ranked seventeenth in the world in 1939, it did not begin to convert to
a full-fledged war economy until the spring of 1942. However, recent
research has revealed that Germany was not as slow to mobilize its
economy as historians once believed. For example, per capita produc¬
tion of consumer goods declined by 22 percent between 1938 and
1941, not the 3 percent claimed by Albert Speer, the former minister of
armaments, in his memoirs, Inside the Third Reich. Meanwhile,
producer goods used for armaments increased by 28 percent. That
Germany did not convert to a full war economy even faster was owing
to its being able to stockpile supplies before each campaign and to
recuperate its losses through the captured resources of its enemies.
Hitler also hesitated to do anything that would lower civilian morale,
which he mistakenly claimed as the decisive reason for Germany’s defeat
in 1918. Consequently, as late as 1943 the production of consumer goods
was still 90 percent of the prewar level (although it declined another 18
percent in 1944), and the German people remained well fed until the
very end of the war. Cultural life also continued at a surprisingly robust
pace until the summer of 1944 because the Nazi leadership also
regarded it as vital to maintain civilian morale. Finally, relatively low
production figures before 1942 also resulted from poor planning and
overlapping jurisdictions which hindered policy implementation.

254

Total War, 1941-1945

All of this changed in February 1942, if less dramatically than once
supposed, when Hitler appointed his chief architect, Albert Speer,
Reichsminister for armaments and munitions. Germany’s arma¬
ments production had increased only moderately since 1938. Speer’s
selection proved to be inspired, but only because he was partly able
to overcome Hitler’s social Darwinistic philosophy of giving the
same task to several different people. As the ordnance minister, Speer
borrowed, ironically, from the Jewish businessman of World War I
Walter Rathenau a system known as “organized improvisation.”
Civilian and military officials established branch committees to plan
and develop new types of weapons and to discuss measures to speed
up weapons production in general. At Hitler’s insistence, the number
of different armaments projects was also reduced in order to increase
the production of the most needed weapons. For example, the types
of aircraft were reduced from 44 to just 5. The treatment of foreign
workers also improved after 1941 as the military situation declined,
with workers from western European countries receiving nearly as
much pay as German workers. Eastern European workers, however,
with the exception of Czechs, were still grossly underpaid and in the
case of Russian POWs also badly underfed. Speer could not over¬
come Hitler’s prejudice against having large numbers of women
working in factories on the grounds that it would be bad for the birth
rate and the morale of front-line soldiers. However, this fact is less
important than historians once believed because the number of
females in the workforce, already high in 1938, remained higher than
in either Britain or the United States. Moreover, the 8 million foreign
workers and prisoners of war in Germany who made up 58 percent
of the workforce in 1944 largely obviated the need for more female
workers.

Thanks in part to the foreign workers, and to the incredibly long
hours put in by German workers, the number of planes built in
Germany increased from 11,000 in 1941 (up only slightly from 8,000
in 1938) to 39,600 in 1944. The number of tanks increased from 3,800
to 19,000, and artillery pieces from 7,800 to 62,300. Only the produc¬
tion of submarines remained basically unchanged because the Allies
had won the Battle of the Atlantic by May 1943. Impressive as these

Total War, 1941-1945

255

increases were, German production could not begin to match the
combined military output of the United States, Russia, and Britain
which was roughly three times that of Germany’s in 1944. The result
of Speer’s efforts was simply to prolong the war. Even German suc¬
cesses early in the war had depended on tactical surprises, not
quantitative or qualitative superiority in weapons. The element of
surprise had ended in the summer of 1941.

Armaments production would have been even more successful had
it not been for Hitler’s early opposition to any weapon that could not
be manufactured within two years, on the grounds that the war would
be won or lost within that time. He changed his mind in 1942 when
he belatedly realized that the war would be protracted, that is, the
very type of war he had said in Mein Kampf that Germany should not
fight. Even then, however, he was interested almost exclusively in
offensive weapons, with the exception of the atomic bomb whose
development he opposed. The so-called vengeance weapons - the V-1
flying bomb, and the supersonic V-2 rocket - were scientific break¬
throughs and caused a great deal of panic in Great Britain, but they
were far from being decisive weapons. Although the famous V-2, the
predecessor of the American moon rockets, was a sensational techno¬
logical achievement against which there was no warning and no
defense, it was highly inaccurate and carried relatively small war¬
heads. The vengeance weapons combined dropped only 0.23 percent
as many explosives on Britain as British and American planes dropped
on Germany during the same period. In terms of the results they pro¬
duced, the new weapons were in fact a huge waste of money. Ironically,
more Germans were killed developing the V-2 than the 5,000 or so
who died as its intended victims. Ultimately the V-2 rocket played a
far more important role in the United States’ mission of sending a
man to the moon than it did in the war.

Technical problems prevented the mass production of jet planes,
first flown in 1939, until September 1944. Jet planes could have made
an enormous difference, particularly in defending German cities
from Allied bombing raids, but by late 1944 Germany was desperately
short of fuel and pilots, and the war was hopelessly lost. That Hitler
had so much faith in the new “miracle weapons” was no doubt partly

256

Total War, 1941-1945

his desperate grasping at straws. It also resulted in his being told what
his subordinates thought he wanted to hear. This was a structural flaw
found in all three of the totalitarian dictatorships.

The War in the West

Hitler was not the only one to make serious mistakes during the war. The
grand strategy of the Allies almost certainly prolonged the war, caused
needless loss of life and property, and left a huge portion of Europe
under Communist control when the war ended. If Hitler was wrong in
committing several divisions to North Africa in 1943, the Allies were, to
a substantial extent, wasting their time by remaining heavily committed
to the Mediterranean theater after July, when the conquest of Sicily had
been completed and Mussolini had been overthrown. To be sure, the
reopening of the Suez Canal meant that shipments of lend-lease aid to
the Soviet Union no longer had to go around South Africa. Aid to anti-
Nazi partisans in Yugoslavia was also facilitated by the renewed use of
the Mediterranean. There was also considerable psychological benefit
to the Allies in knocking one of the major Axis powers out of the war.
The rapid conquest of southern Italy in September enabled the Allies to
bomb German positions in the Balkans, southern France, northern
Italy, and previously invulnerable cities in the Reich.

Further involvement in Italy after September 1943, however, was
probably counterproductive. The campaign, especially the way it
dragged on for nearly two years, was a long road to nowhere. It was
fought mainly for political reasons, demonstrating to public opinion
in the United States and Great Britain, as well as to Stalin, that the
Western powers were willing and able to take the offensive some¬
where until such time as they could launch a major invasion of the
Continent. Even if successful, it would merely have brought the Allies
up to the Alps, an almost impenetrable barrier to Germany unless the
Reich was already on the brink of defeat. The Allies’ decision to seek
the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers made at the
Casablanca Conference of January 1943 - which was neither sought
nor approved of by Stalin - along with their bombing campaign

Total War, 1941-1945

257

against German cities, provided Josef Goebbels with more propa¬
ganda about the impossibility of surrendering than he could have
invented himself. It gave plausibility to Goebbels’s fear-mongering
claim that if the German people thought war was bad, peace would be
even worse. The announcement of unconditional surrender as the
Allies’ ultimate demand also came as a relief to Hitler who was now
freed of all pressure to seek a compromise end to the war.

Both the morality and the effectiveness of the bombing attacks
have been called into question by historians. There is no doubt that
they diverted 1.1 million people (including youths, men too physi¬
cally disabled for military service, and prisoners of war) from war
production to air-raid duty. Aircraft factories had to be dispersed,
thereby reducing output. Much of the Luftwaffe had to be used to
defend German cities instead of providing support in land combat.

The raids, especially those carried out by the British, were directed
primarily at city centers with their civilian populations - consisting
mostly of women, the very old and young, and foreign workers - rather
than at bridges, rail links, waterways, and oil refineries. This policy
was followed by the British (less so by the Americans) even after more
accurate targeting methods were developed. More than one-third of
British war production went into bombers, but the RAF long remained
resistant to using bombers to search for German submarines.
Consequently, even in the highly industrialized and geographically
vulnerable Ruhr region of northwestern Germany only 10 to 15 percent
of its productive capacity had been destroyed by the end of the war
because the RAF shifted its attention to Berlin in 1943, an industrially
much less important target than the Ruhr. While the raids were going
on, virtually no resources were spent on building landing craft, even
though they were necessary for any invasion of Europe.

Germany’s city centers contained cultural and residential build¬
ings, and small, inefficient family-run stores, whereas factories were
in the suburbs where they often escaped bombing altogether. Hence,
German war production did not peak until September 1944, more
than two years after the beginning of massive air raids. A case in point
was Dresden in February 1945, when 30,000 civilians, mostly women,
children, and foreign workers, were killed, and some of the great

258

Total War, 1941-1945

architectural masterpieces of Western civilization were destroyed.
Even Josef Goebbels admitted in his diary that the bombing had seri¬
ously undermined civilian morale by March 1945, as it was intended
to do. By that time nearly 500,000 Germans had been killed in the
bombing raids and Germany had hopelessly lost the war.

The cross-channel invasion of June 6,1944, better known as D-Day,
has been celebrated by politicians and the general public in the West
as the turning point in World War II. Professional historians have
been much more circumspect and have usually admitted only that the
invasion was of decisive importance mainly in the western theater of
the war. The popular view is rather self-congratulatory and assumes
that the Russians had been doing little or nothing on the Eastern
Front during the previous three years. As mentioned above, the deci¬
sive turning point in the war almost certainly came in 1941. The
Channel crossing simply determined whether the Russians would
defeat the Germans by themselves, or the West would share in that
victory and possibly prevent the Communists from dominating the
Eurasian continent from Vladivostok on the Pacific to perhaps as far
west as Brest in France on the Atlantic.

The invasion was repeatedly postponed because the Allies had long
been overestimating the Germans and because the United States was
committed to taking the offensive against Japan in the Pacific. Churchill
feared a repetition of casualties on the scale of World War I, and of
those which the British and Canadians had suffered in the premature
Dieppe raid on the northern coast of France in 1942. Much to the dis¬
gust of Stalin and top American generals, Britain and the United States
postponed a major invasion of the Continent in favor of sideshows in
North Africa and Italy, while also imagining that the bombing of
Germany alone might cause the Reich to surrender. The Germans may
actually have been stronger in the west in 1944 than they had been a
year earlier. Their fortifications along the northern coast of France
were certainly improved, and because the Eastern Front had in the
meantime moved further west, it was easier for them to transfer troops
between fronts. Nevertheless, the Germans were much weaker than
the Allies had feared. The concept of an “Atlantic Wall” was mostly a
figment of Goebbels’s propaganda.

Total War, 1941-1945

259

At the same time, Hitler also overestimated Allied strength.
Although he correctly guessed that the Allies would land in Normandy,
he and some of his generals thought that a still larger invasion would
follow near Calais, in northeastern France, because it was much closer
to Germany. Consequently, he refused to allow von Rundstedt to
move crack armored divisions to the presumed landing site because
he wanted to save them for the “real” invasion, which was supposedly
yet to come.

Hitler had predicted that if an Allied invasion succeeded, the war
would be lost for Germany. Rather than acting on this sensible judg¬
ment, however, he kept the fighting going for almost another year, a
year in which most of the destruction of the German cities took place,
but to which he was indifferent. Germany lost half a million men and
most of its tanks in Normandy, in part because of Hitler’s refusal to
order a timely withdrawal. This delay also made it impossible to
establish a defensive line along the Seine River in north central France.
By September, the Allies enjoyed a 20 to 1 superiority in tanks and a
25 to 1 advantage in planes. However, they were slowed by a critical
shortage of supplies, which was further exacerbated by the failure of
British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to clear the Scheldt
estuary near Antwerp, Belgium promptly. Some historians believe
that the Western powers missed an opportunity to end the war in
1944 because they pursued Eisenhower’s “broad front” policy and
experienced bad luck in their attempt to seize a strategic bridge across
the Rhine at Arnhem in the Netherlands.

On December 15 Hitler launched what some have called his “last
gamble” in Belgium. In reality, the subsequent Battle of the Bulge was
no gamble at all on Hitler’s part since, by this time, he had nothing to
lose. His strategy, however, does tell us a great deal about his detach¬
ment from reality. Rather than saving his remaining strength for
defending the German homeland, which had already been invaded by
the Russians, and recalling hundreds of thousands of troops occu¬
pying Norway, Denmark, and parts of Latvia, he decided on yet
another offensive, not against the “subhuman” Russians but against
the West. Hoping to repeat his spectacular Ardennes offensive of May
1940, he imagined, at this late date, that if the Germans could capture

260

Total War, 1941-1945

Antwerp, it would destroy half the West’s divisions, shatter its will,
and cause a split between the Western powers and the Russians. In
reality, all the momentary success of the offensive was made possible
by stripping German defenses in the east, thus hastening a Russian
breakthrough and ultimately the end of the war, with the Russians in
possession of Berlin. It also placed the Western Allies in a poor
bargaining position at the Yalta Conference in February, making it
even more difficult than it would otherwise have been for them to
resist Russian demands concerning Germany’s eastern border with
Poland. As for Hitler, he admitted to his confidant and minister of
armaments, Albert Speer, that if Germany lost the Ardennes offensive
the war itself would be lost. The subsequent defeat did not stop the
Fuhrer once again from continuing the hopeless struggle for another
four months during which time German cities continued to be pum-
meled by Allied bombs.

The End of the Third Reich

If the successful Allied landings in Normandy on June 6,1944 marked
the final turning point in the military history of the Third Reich, the
failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20 marked the beginning
of the last and most extreme phase of Nazi totalitarianism domesti¬
cally. The plot was by no means the first attempt to kill Hitler, but it
was the most carefully planned and the biggest in terms of the number
of conspirators involved, as well as the last. Several earlier attempts to
assassinate the Fuhrer, which had almost succeeded, merely con¬
firmed Hitler’s belief that he lived a charmed life and was destined for
great things. The attempt in 1944 failed because a meeting, which
Hitler was to attend in his headquarters in East Prussia, was moved
from a concrete bunker to an above-ground wooden building, and
thus the effect of the bomb blast that was intended to kill Hitler was
dissipated. Whether the plot could have succeeded even if Hitler had
been killed has been the subject of considerable debate.

What is more interesting is that both Nazi and Allied propaganda
dismissed the plot as the work of a small clique of reactionary Prussian

Total War, 1941-1945

261

army officers. In reality, it involved a large number of people from
many walks of life, including Social Democrats, trade unionists, theo¬
logians, scientists, and even disillusioned Nazis. To be sure, to have a
chance of success the conspiracy had to be led by military officers.
However belated the coup may have been, there was nothing
comparable to it in the Soviet Union or Italy. It represented a tremen¬
dous act of moral as well as physical courage in view of Hitler’s still
considerable popularity and the fact that the conspirators had been
given absolutely no encouragement from abroad.

The purge that followed the abortive coup plot was by far the larg¬
est in the history of Nazi Germany. Around 5,000 people, 2,000 of
them army officers, were killed in the immediate aftermath of the
plot, including 160 to 200 people who had been directly involved.
Including members of outlawed political parties, dissidents, and
“defeatists,” 11,448 people were executed between July 20 and the end
of the war in May 1945.

These executions were merely one aspect of life in the Third Reich
during its final 10 months of existence. It was only now that the Nazi
regime approached full totalitarianism. Almost all theaters and night¬
clubs were closed, along with universities and schools of domestic
science and commerce. After July 1944, 140,000 Germans from the
cultural sector and nearly 600,000 state and other public officials were
reassigned to the Wehrmacht, along with another million workers.
All military furloughs were canceled, and obligatory labor for women
up to the age of 50 was introduced, but not fully implemented. Now,
all men between the ages of 15 and 60 were liable for conscription into
the Volkssturm, or “militia.” Listening to foreign radio broadcasts or
questioning the likelihood of victory became capital crimes. Goebbels’s
last success was to convince most Germans that defeat would be
accompanied by starvation and annihilation, which seemed plausible
in light of Allied bombing and Soviet plundering and rape in eastern
Germany. It was during the last 10 months of the war that over half
the deaths of the German civilians and soldiers occurred, along with
the majority of carpet bombing raids of German cities.

Hitler’s mental and physical condition in the last phase of the war
has been the subject of considerable interest among historians. He

262

Total War, 1941-1945

was apparently convinced as early as 1937 that he did not have much
longer to live, but he still looked fairly healthy and vigorous in early
1942. With the onset of the Russian campaign he changed his old
habits of sleeping late and indulging in plenty of relaxing entertain¬
ment. Constant meetings followed by short drug-induced nights of
sleep inevitably took their toll. By February 1945 he was starting to
repeat himself, his limbs trembled, he walked with a stoop, and his
voice quavered - all symptoms of hardening of the arteries and
Parkinson’s disease. His crimes and errors were not caused by his ill¬
ness, but his physical decline and lack of sleep probably contributed to
his moodiness and unwillingness to be seen in public.

Except for the very last weeks of his life when he became apathetic
and untidy, Hitler’s earlier character traits and political beliefs were
simply exaggerated. He became even less tolerant, was convinced he
was surrounded by traitors, complained that the courts were too
lenient, was more prone to fits of rage, and was even more fanatical.
He now lost any remnants of that pragmatism that had led to one
political, economic, diplomatic, and military triumph after another
between 1930 and 1941. His social Darwinist philosophy determined
his final decisions. Like Mussolini, he blamed the German people
rather than himself for the catastrophe: they had proved to be less
fit to survive than the Russians and had therefore had lost the right to
exist.

Hitler’s seemingly inexplicable decisions after the summer of 1944
make a great deal more sense when seen in this nihilistic light. In
September 1944 he instigated a scorched-earth policy for all German
territories that were about to be lost to the Allies. Germans were
supposed to evacuate the areas; all who remained were to be denied
the amenities of civilization, including industrial plants and public
utilities. Food supplies and farms were to be destroyed. Architectural
monuments and works of art were all to be demolished. Such destruc¬
tion, of course, would have reduced the fire power available to fight
the Allies. The destruction of food and shelter would have had abso¬
lutely no impact on the amply provisioned British and Americans,
and little even on the Russians who by this time were being well
supplied with food by the United States. Fortunately, not much

Total War, 1941-1945

263

German territory fell to the Allies before March 1945, when Albert
Speer was able to trick Hitler into unknowingly signing an order
countermanding it. In the end, Hitler failed in all his goals - of con¬
quering Lebensraum, exterminating all European Jews, and destroying
Germany - although he came horrifyingly close in all three cases. He
was completely successful only in killing himself on April 30, 1945,
but not before issuing one final diatribe in his Political Testament
against world Jewry while showing no compassion or regret for the 4
million German soldiers and 500,000 civilians who had perished
because of his war.

Meanwhile, Stalins conduct of the war in its later stages, particularly
his diplomacy, was a study in cold-blooded pragmatism. He had
already used diplomacy to wring major territorial concessions from
Hitler in the secret clauses of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.
However, he never admitted that the pact had helped precipitate World
War II. He would not even allow it to be mentioned at the postwar
Nuremberg Trials of major war criminals or in the postwar Soviet
media. After the German invasion he made a virtue of his own weak¬
ness, just as Hitler had done between 1933 and 1935. In 1942 the Soviet
Union was still in a precarious position and in need of all the help it
could get from its new partners. This dependency, however, did not
prevent Stalin from demanding, not just asking, for military aid and
the opening of a second front that the Nazis would have to defend. He
even suggested that cowardice could be the only reason for a delay,
even though he realized that an invasion was completely impossible in
1942. After he had driven the Germans out of the Soviet Union in the
summer of 1944, he sent part of his army into Romania, Hungary, and
Yugoslavia to extend his political influence, rather than immediately
taking the most direct route through Poland to invade Germany.
When his army reached Warsaw in July 1944, he ordered it to pause
and watch the Wehrmacht crush an uprising of anti-Communist
resisters, in order to facilitate his postwar control of Poland.

Churchill and Roosevelt were anxious to please the Soviet dictator.
If Stalin was dependent on them, they were equally dependent on
him. That Germany suffered at least 75 percent of its casualties on the
Russian Front undoubtedly enhanced Stalin’s bargaining power.

264

Total War, 1941-1945

Nevertheless, Churchill, who had had an enormous distrust of Stalin
before the war, now treated him like an insecure statesman whose
trust had to be won through concessions. He started to refer to him as
“Uncle Joe,” a term also used by Roosevelt. At the Tehran Conference
in November 1943, Roosevelt prepared to join Stalin’s offer to toast
the shooting of 50,000 German officers until the horrified Churchill
objected. Although FDR probably considered the toast a joke, there is
a good chance that Stalin did not, since he had ordered the execution
of nearly as many Soviet officers only a few years before. At the Yalta
Conference, the American president told an adviser that “Stalin does
not want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I
give him everything that I possibly can and ask nothing from him in
return ... he won’t try to annex anything and will work for a world of
democracy and peace.” 2 That Roosevelt would expect a mass mur¬
derer of his own people to respect human rights in nations he had just
conquered can only be explained by FDR’s profound ignorance of
Stalin’s past.

Nevertheless, Western critics who have pilloried Roosevelt for
“selling out” eastern Europe at Yalta have been far off the mark. The
Soviet domination of the East was virtually inevitable because of the
fall of France and the belated entry of the United States into the war.
Even a Western invasion of Europe in 1943 would have moved the
East-West demarcation line only slightly further east, perhaps to the
Oder River, Vienna, Prague, and Budapest, because a successful
landing would have forced Hitler to transfer troops to the west to
meet the new threat.

A fascinating thing took place in the course of the Russo-German
campaign in 1941. Up till then Hitler had managed to set much of his
ideology aside. His campaigns were well calculated, pragmatic, and
even marked with a certain restraint. The result had been a staggering
succession of victories. By contrast, soon after the beginning of the
Russian campaign, the Fuhrer cast aside all inhibitions and gave full
vent to his most extreme ideological goals. An almost endless

2 Quoted in M. K. Dziewanowski, War at Any Price (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1987), 321.

Total War, 1941-1945

265

succession of defeats followed, which did not end until his suicide in
a Berlin bunker in 1945.

Stalin, for his part, wore an ideological blindfold before and
during most of the campaign in 1941. His distrust of everyone except
Hitler and his refusal to take the strategic defensive cost the Soviet
Union millions of unnecessary casualties and allowed the invader to
penetrate deep into the country. Before the end of 1941, however, he
was starting to become a pragmatist. He turned the campaign into a
war to save Mother Russia and even enlisted the support of organized
religion for the task. He began listening to his generals and accepting
their advice. Diplomatically, he maneuvered the West into helping
him defeat the Germans and conceding eastern Europe as part of his
sphere of influence. He disguised his political ambitions in eastern
Europe until after the war was safely won and he no longer needed
the West. By the end of the war, he had secured for himself the position
of infallible statesman. Shared dangers and accomplishments gave
the Soviet regime the legitimacy it had never had before and would
never enjoy again. (For one of the many monuments in Russia
commemorating World War II, see Plate 27.)

Meanwhile, Mussolini discovered that he had made a pact with the
devil as soon as he entered the war in 1940. If Germany had won the
war, Italy would have been at best a very junior partner. If Germany
lost, the Fascist regime would be dragged down with it, as indeed it was.
His militaristic ideology prevented him from staying on the sidelines
the way General Franco did in Spain. (Franco remained in power until
he died peacefully in 1975.) In 1945 Mussolini and his mistress were
shot and hung upside down in a gas station in Milan, like butchered
pieces of meat.

The Collapse of Soviet
Totalitarianism

The Communist system ... had also polluted the mind.

The relative moderation and pragmatism that marked Stalin’s war
years largely ended before the war itself did. An exception was the
Russian Orthodox churches, which had been reopened during the
war and remained open after the conflict ended. Although he
deported millions of ethnic minorities from their homelands to
remote regions of the Soviet Union, Stalin never again instigated
anything so murderous as the Great Terror. As noted in Chapter 9, the
cult of Stalin returned in 1943, after a two-year hiatus, and controls
over journalists were also reapplied. Nevertheless, in his dealings with
the West, he appeared to be the congenial pipe-smoking “Uncle Joe”
who, to be sure, was a hard bargainer when defending what he
regarded as the “security” of his country but also a man who could
compromise in the interests of world peace. At Yalta, he agreed to
allow France to share in the occupation of Germany and to include

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

267

democrats in the Polish government. At the Potsdam Conference,
held in July 1945, he also promised to join the war against Japan.

Stalin’s Last Years, 1945-1953

Even before the meeting at Potsdam, however, East-West relations
began to sour as the common fear of Nazi Germany faded. In March
1945 President Roosevelt, growing alarmed at Soviet attempts to
communize Poland, sent Stalin a strongly worded protest, though
neither he nor his successor, Harry Truman, was willing to risk war
over Poland. Stalin’s relations with the West continued to deteriorate
in the late 1940s until they reached a low point with the invasion of
South Korea by Communist North Korea in 1950.

The causes of this East-West “Cold War” have been the subject of
sometimes bitter disputes among historians. Contemporaries saw it
resulting from Stalin’s alleged imperialism and desire to communize as
much of the world as possible. Some later historians claimed that the
West, particularly the United States, overreacted to Stalin’s legitimate
desire for security in east central Europe. Still other historians hold
neither side entirely responsible and suggest that a confrontation was
likely once the United States and the Soviet Union were left as the
world’s only superpowers. They point out that the traditional US
policy of seeking self-determination for nations, in this case in east
central Europe, was incompatible with Stalin’s desire for security. With
the temporary and partial exception of Czechoslovakia, freely elected
governments in the areas occupied by Soviet troops at the end of the
war were bound to be anti-Communist and, as such, would not fulfill
Stalin’s desire for security. However, Communist governments could
exist in east central Europe only with the support of Russian bayonets;
and the presence of Soviet troops as far west as the Elbe River in central
Germany were bound to offend and alarm the West. In addition, there
was a deep mutual suspicion which led both sides to construe the
actions of their adversary in the most negative possible way.

Whatever view one favors, Stalin’s highly suspicious personality
should not be left out of the equation. These characteristics simply

268

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

became more pronounced as he approached old age. Superficially
at least, there were some concrete grounds for his suspicion. The
Anglo-French appeasement of Hitler before the war could easily be
interpreted as a deliberate attempt to build up Nazi Germany as an
enemy of the Soviet Union. The repeated delay in establishing a
second major front in the West, especially in 1943 and early 1944,
along with an interest Winston Churchill showed in a Balkan offensive,
were also bound to arouse Stalin’s distrust. However, to explain the
origins of the Cold War by these actions alone is to ignore domestic
considerations. One way of establishing social cohesion was through
fear of a common outside enemy. In this effort Stalin was apparently
so successful that the fear lasted until the 1980s (see Plate 3).

Stalin also worried about internal enemies long before the cooling
of diplomatic relations with the West. His paranoia and cruelty were
exemplified by the rapid growth of gulags. These camps may have had
12 million inmates by the early 1950s, including thousands of former
prisoners of war and civilians who, having been “infected” by the
West, were transferred to Soviet camps as soon as the Germans
released them. The maximum time served in these brutal labor camps
rose from 10 to 25 years. Consequently, it is probably naive to believe
that Stalin’s treatment of his new subjects in east central Europe would
have been significantly different from his treatment of Soviet citizens
if the West had pursued a more conciliatory policy.

Stalin’s suspicious nature was probably also a factor in his rejecting
Marshall Plan aid in 1947. Although the Marshall Plan is now seen as
a quintessential Cold War measure, it was originally announced by
Secretary of State George Marshall as an economic package that
would aid all of Europe, including the Soviet Union. Such aid, if
accepted, would have revealed to Western economists just how
backward and weak the Soviet Union was and would have weakened
Soviet dominance in its sphere of influence in east central Europe. For
example, the real wages of Soviet workers in 1948 were only 45 per¬
cent what they had been in 1928, and still only 70 percent of the 1928
level in 1952. Accepting foreign aid would also have undermined
Stalin’s position at home by suggesting that Communist Russia needed
the help of the capitalist West.

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

269

There is no evidence that Stalin had a timetable for taking over
Europe any more than Hitler did. It is reasonable to assume that like
Hitler, he took advantage of opportunities as they came along and was
prepared to take control of as much territory as he safely could.
However, the brutal tactics of Russian police organs in deporting
democratic representatives from Poland and Hungary, together with a
domestic Communist coup in Prague in March 1948, were no more
unqualified successes than Hitler’s takeover of Austria and the
Sudetenland had been a decade earlier. In each instance, the opponents
of totalitarianism were frightened enough to take countermeasures; in
Stalins case the West was provoked into forming the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949.

Stalin’s foreign policy was no carbon copy of Hitler’s. Even at his
most aggressive, the Soviet leader would not push a confrontation
to the point of war if only because the Soviet Union had been so
weakened by World War II. He (and his successors), apparently, also
recognized the hopelessness of exporting their brand of Marxian
socialism to the advanced countries of the West. Consequently, he
actually discouraged the French and Italian Communist parties from
seizing power. Likewise, he restrained his supporters in Greece,
Yugoslavia, Iran, and even China. He asked for but did not insist on
sharing the postwar military occupation of Japan. He did, apparently,
hope to win over the Germans and Austrians to Communism, but
this effort was hopelessly compromised by his desire to extract repa¬
rations. When the West responded with an airlift to his cutting off
ground transportation to its zones of occupation in West Berlin in
1948, he did not interfere with the flights and eventually called off the
Berlin blockade early the next year. When the North Koreans invaded
South Korea in 1950 (with his support), he also avoided direct
involvement. Nevertheless, his foreign policy was overly ambitious
because the empire he created eventually strained the resources of the
Soviet Union beyond breaking point. If he had allowed in east central
Europe the kind of democratic neutrality he conceded to Finland
(apparently to avoid pushing neutral Sweden into NATO) he almost
certainly would have avoided an arms race that the Soviet Union
could not afford.

270

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

Stalin kept himself just as isolated as he did the Soviet Union.
During the last eight years of his life he made only two public speeches.
He granted few interviews because he did not want journalists to see
that he had grown old and thin and that his hair had turned white. He
also did not want them to know that his memory was not what it had
once been. His rapid aging was at least partly due to his lifestyle. Like
Hitler, he turned night into day by not going to bed until nearly dawn
and was chronically sleep deprived during the war. Unlike Hitler,
though, he smoked cigarettes and pipes and consumed large quan¬
tities of alcohol. Nevertheless, he maintained his grip on power by
rarely allowing Communist party organs like the party Congress and
the Central Committee to meet; for example, the party Congress met
only twice between 1934 and his death in 1953. Like Hitler, Stalin cre¬
ated great confusion (but also more loyal followers) by increasing the
number of official positions and overlapping their responsibilities in
a concerted effort to prevent any one person from accumulating too
much power. Like Hitler and Mussolini as well as other dictators,
Stalin was particularly careful not to groom a successor who might
instead become a competitor.

Economically and culturally, the postwar years picked up where
the prewar years left off. Stalin continued to regard peasants as
enemies and consequently agriculture remained highly centralized,
like the rest of the economy, but even more backward. The country
produced less grain annually in the last four years of Stalins rule than
it had under Tsar Nicholas II in 1913. Culturally, the party continued
to lay down the law in all fields, such as philosophy, linguistics, and
mathematics. Stalin was particularly intrigued with the pseudo¬
science of the biologist Trofim Lysenko, who believed that plants could
be permanently changed by their environment, an idea that the Soviet
dictator believed could also be applied to human beings.

During the last five years of his life Stalin became almost as obsessed
with Jews as Hitler had been, and he regarded them with much the
same hostility as he had earlier the kulaks and his own generals. If
Hitler believed in a world conspiracy of Jewish Bolshevism, Stalin was
convinced there was a world Jewish conspiracy of capitalism and
Zionism (although he had supported the founding of the state of

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

271

Israel in 1948 as a way of weakening Great Britain in the Middle East).
He had thousands of elite Jewish doctors, intellectuals, and artists
arrested and imprisoned as saboteurs, spies, or assassins. Dozens were
executed, and thousands lost their jobs, especially if they were in the
army or the secret police, now called the KGB, or if they were in party
committees. Stalin’s anti-Semitism struck close to home when he
strongly objected to his elder son, Yakov, marrying a Jew; his daughter,
Svetlana, committed an unpardonable offense by falling in love with a
Jew. Stalin broke up that romance by sending the paramour to a labor
camp for 10 years.

The last straw came when Golda Meir arrived in Moscow in the fall
of 1948 as the Israeli ambassador. A big demonstration of Jews caused
Stalin to inaugurate a campaign against Jewish culture and Zionism.
“Rootless cosmopolitans” allegedly threatened the Soviet Union.
Jewish schools and publications were shut down and Nazi-like quotas
were placed on the admission of Jewish students to universities and
scientific institutes, as well as on the employment of Jews in the dip¬
lomatic corps and the legal profession. Stalin’s anti-Jewish obsession,
and possibly the growing arteriosclerosis of the brain first diagnosed
at this time, finally convinced him that Jewish doctors throughout the
country were secretly trying to kill their patients, so he had a large
number of them arrested in the summer of 1952. In early 1953 he
announced to his lieutenants that all Soviet Jews had to be deported
to Siberia. There is also evidence that he was planning a new general
terror in order to re-establish “discipline,” which had presumably
been eroded by the war.

The Khrushchev Era

Soviet totalitarianism began disintegrating from the moment Stalin
died on March 5,1953. The process was painfully slow, however, and
did not fully end until the Soviet Union itself dissolved in 1991, if
indeed even then. Never again in Soviet history would there be a
leader of Stalin’s enormous power who so completely dominated his
subordinates. And never again would state-mandated terror - one of

272

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

the major elements of totalitarianism - be quite so ubiquitous and
frightening. However, the fear of the secret police and gulags instilled
by Stalin long outlasted his death. Its very memory was enough to
keep most Soviet citizens firmly in line. The official Communist
ideology also lost much of its rigidity and utopianism. Like fear, it too
did not disappear and was at least passively accepted by the Soviet
majority until the late 1980s.

Contrary to the fears of the Communist party’s leadership, there
was no popular revolt following Stalin’s death, probably because there
was too much fear and inertia. Astonishingly, there was even wide¬
spread grief when his death was announced. Stalin’s autocracy was
replaced by a collective leadership, and his power fragmented in many
directions. Of decisive importance in reining in the terror was the
overthrow of the chief of secret police, Lavrenti Beria. He was exe¬
cuted, along with his closest colleagues, at the end of 1953. His death,
however, marked the last time that a major Soviet leader was exe¬
cuted. It also meant that the KGB was no longer a virtual state within
the state but was subordinate to the party.

Beria had been one of just five men who had inherited the bulk of
Stalin’s vast powers. However, it was Nikita Khrushchev, born in 1894
the son of a Ukrainian miner, general secretary of the Communist
party (a title that Stalin had not used since 1934), who emerged victo¬
rious from the struggle for the succession in 1956. At a mere five feet
and one inch, the corpulent but gregarious Khrushchev seemed to his
colleagues the least threatening of Stalin’s possible successors, much
like Stalin himself after the death of Lenin. Like Hitler and Stalin,
Khrushchev’s rivals badly underestimated him.

A process that later came to be known as “de-Stalinization” began
immediately after the dictator’s death. In the period between 1953 and
1955, party organs like the Congress and the Central Committee,
which were rarely called into session by Stalin and had no power when
they did meet, regained the authority they had had in Lenin’s time.
However, no thought was given to bringing the masses into the political
process or to permitting an organized political opposition. By 1956 the
extreme isolationism of the Soviet Union had also been abandoned.

Rather than withdrawing from the West, Khrushchev wanted Russia
to compete with it in industrial production and in cultural influence,

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

273

including in the field of sport. Foreign travel and cultural exchanges
with the West were encouraged, although travelers both to and from
the USSR were closely monitored. Khrushchev himself traveled widely
both at home and abroad, exhorting local party officials and issuing
both threats and appeals for coexistence. A considerable cultural thaw
also took place during his rule as authors and artists were able to take
up subjects that had been absolutely taboo under Stalin.

The most dramatic break with the past, however, and the high-water
mark of de-Stalinization, was Secretary Khrushchev’s four-hour “secret”
speech to the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. The speech, entitled
“On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences,” was made to 1,500
delegates including some prominent foreign Communists. The speech
could not remain secret for long and soon leaked out to the whole
country. It was an attempt to cleanse the party and its ideology by
separating them from the crimes of Stalin even though Khrushchev
himself, as a member of the ruling Politburo, had been complicit in
many of these crimes. In an all-night session, Khrushchev enumerated
the number of innocent party members and military officials who
had been killed in the purges. He also blamed Stalin for all the failures
of Communism after 1934: Stalin had been a megalomaniac who
had eliminated all his rivals and afterwards a large portion of the
Soviet people. Khrushchev, however, was careful to keep his attack
personal. It was not an unambiguous critique of all of Stalin’s deeds.
The bureaucratic system, the highly centralized command economy,
collectivization, and the monopoly position of the Communist party,
along with its ideological infallibility, were all left unchallenged.

Khrushchevs speech, simultaneously brave and reckless, had enor¬
mous consequences, some intended and some not. It greatly reduced
the pall of fear that had paralyzed Soviet society, and to some extent it
increased the legitimacy of the regime. At the same time, while the
general secretary may have wished to defend the principle of the party’s
infallibility, many Russians began wondering how an infallible party
could have permitted a man like Stalin to attain power in the first place.
In the West, the speech also had a shattering effect on Communist
party members who had refused to believe rumors about Stalin’s
crimes. The speech, combined with the Soviet crushing of
anti-Communist rebellions in Poland and Hungary (inspired in part by

274

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

the official admission of Stalins crimes), which took place a few months
later, led many non-Soviet Communists to resign from the party.

Revelations about Stalin’s labor camps and collectivization led
to still more disillusionment with the regime. The publication of
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
brought to public awareness the horrors of life in a gulag. Even
more information about the camps became available as a result of
Khrushchev releasing most political prisoners. Disclosures about the
involuntary nature and the brutality of collectivization called into
question the very legitimacy of the collective farms.

De-Stalinization involved much more than a simple denunciation
of the past. Khrushchev was determined to increase the regime’s sta¬
bility by increasing the freedom of workers to choose their jobs and
by catering to the widespread desire for the availability of more and
better consumer goods and housing. Wages, work hours, and pen¬
sions were also all improved. After 1955 peasants were no longer
treated like enemies of the state. In April 1956 a decree abolished the
15-year prison sentences that were given to peasants and industrial
workers who left their jobs. The slave labor of prison camps also
became counterproductive in an increasingly technological era.
Heavy industry, which had been the be-all and end-all of the Stalinist
era, was now put on a par with light industry - in theory but not in
practice. By 1960-1 Khrushchev was calling for some decentraliza¬
tion of industry and a larger role for the marketplace. However, any
hope of significantly increasing the production of consumer goods
conflicted with the expansion of the space and military programs,
which diverted capital, scientists, engineers, and managers into
nonconsumer-oriented areas. There was also no overall concept,
cohesion, or consistency to the general secretary’s economic reforms.
His ideas were later characterized by the Soviet ambassador to the
United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, as ranging “from genuinely inter¬
esting to the impractical and bizarre.” 1 An even greater problem was
that Khrushchev raised unrealistic expectations in the people, who
were not satisfied with only a modest improvement in their standard

Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence (New York, 1995), 47.

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism 275

of living. His “Virgin Lands” project east of the Caspian Sea turned
into an economic and ecological fiasco. By basing the legitimacy of
the Soviet Union on economic performance, Khrushchev and his
colleagues were undermining their own authority. His boast in 1961
that the Soviet Union would far surpass the West economically by
1970 turned out, in the long run, to be a bad joke. The general secre¬
tary also threatened the privileged positions of those party members
whose jobs were tied to the status quo.

Khrushchev’s foreign policy alternated wildly between attempts to
improve relations with the West (detente) and threats of nuclear anni¬
hilation. Soviet relations with China also deteriorated. The Communist
takeover of Cuba in 1959, which was entirely homegrown (see
Plate 28), was enthusiastically received in the Soviet Union, but it was
followed by the humiliating Cuban missile crisis of 1962. This crisis,
along with Khrushchevs unwillingness to even consult the Politburo
before making important decisions, finally gave his enemies the
excuse they needed to oust him. A speech he gave just two weeks
before his removal, assigning a low priority to heavy industrial pro¬
duction and military strength, also threatened a great many vested
interests in the USSR. When Khrushchev was overthrown by his
enemies in the Politburo in 1964 (the only time in the history of the
Soviet Union that body had exercised such a power), however, he was
accused of incompetence, not treason. Though deposed, he was able
to live out the rest of his life in peaceful retirement. Even those people
close to him were merely demoted, not purged. Although Khrushchev’s
administration ended ignominiously, he can at least be credited with
alleviating the worst aspects of Stalinism. A survey of young adults in
1998 placed Khrushchev behind only Nicholas II as the most respected
Russian leader in the twentieth century.

Reaction and Reform: From Brezhnev to Gorbachev

Khrushchev’s nine years of power were followed by the 18-year rule of
Leonid Brezhnev (1964-82), the second longest in Soviet history. In
general, Brezhnev’s rule represented a conservative reaction to the

276

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

reforms of his predecessor. The reputation of the KGB was restored
and its 90,000 officers and 300,000 employees continued to run 900 labor
camps containing over 1 million prisoners, although these numbers
were sharply down from the Stalin era. By the early 1980s even Stalin’s
memory had been largely rehabilitated. Although he was not the sub¬
ject of near-religious worship, he was again the great national leader
whose devotion to the working class and selfless struggle for socialism
were unquestionable. Serious criticism of his wartime leadership and
collectivization was banned by the mass media, which was still thor¬
oughly controlled by the regime. What Khrushchev had called
“crimes” were now called “mistakes.” However, neither Stalinist terror
nor rigid cultural orthodoxy returned, and there was even more
emphasis on material incentives and individual rewards than under
Khrushchev. This was a golden age for Soviet bureaucrats, the nomen¬
klatura, who led comfortable lives without fear of being purged. All
groups in Soviet society saw their standard of living rise fairly quickly
until the late 1960s and then more slowly until the mid-1970s.

The improvement in the economy, especially in the early 1970s,
was due largely to the increase in the international price of crude oil
which greatly benefited an oil-exporting country like the Soviet
Union. By the late 1970s the Soviet economy stopped growing
altogether. The reason for this stagnation is not entirely clear. Russia’s
successful but costly attempt to achieve military parity with the
United States, along with its aid to “liberation movements” in colonial
territories, are certainly partial reasons. Another explanation is the
decline in the international price of crude oil in the late 1970s.

Perhaps the Soviet people were also simply morally and physically
exhausted after 60 years of hard work and privation. Although there
were more opportunities for plant managers to exercise initiative, the
primacy of central planning remained unchanged. Drunkenness,
slackness at work, and especially the corruption of state and party offi¬
cials all became more common. Life expectancy declined, particularly
for men, which fell from 68 to 64 years during the Brezhnev years,
while the infant mortality rate rose. Working conditions were bad,
and the quality of goods produced was even worse. Productivity was
also hurt by the 10 million inspectors - 10 to 15 percent of the entire

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

277

workforce - whose sole job was to monitor and control the performance
of other workers and the fulfillment of the quota system of production.

The political and economic situation of the Soviet Union did not
improve after the death of Brezhnev in November 1982. His succes¬
sor, Yuri Andropov, who had just completed 15 years as chairman of
the KGB, was already 68 when he began his 15 months as the general
secretary of the Communist party. During that time he consolidated
his power, the economy remained stagnant, and foreign relations
actually deteriorated. His main accomplishment was re-establishing
the KGB as the linchpin of the Soviet system and the interpreter of the
party’s will. His long-range goals (at least publicly) were still those of
his predecessors going back to Lenin: to Sovietize the world and to
create a new “Soviet man,” which meant putting work ahead of one’s
material needs. Andropov carried out no reforms during his brief
tenure in office, but he recognized the need for change and dismissed
officials whose corruption went well beyond the norm.

When Andropov died in February 1983, he was succeeded by an
even older man, the 73-year-old Konstantin Chernenko. His chief
asset seems to have been that he was about the same age as the other
top leaders of the party and as such could be trusted not to make any
drastic changes. He did not disappoint them. During his year in office
he basically continued the policies of his predecessors, except for
making the criminal code even harsher and the use of torture more
common. Chernenko was a nonentity who had no charisma or ideas
and could not even read a speech effectively. He was simply an embar¬
rassment to the officials who had elected him.

It was perhaps for these reasons that Chernenko’s death in March
1985 marked the end of the second generation of Soviet leaders who
were born shortly before World War I. The election of 54-year-old
Mikhail Gorbachev as general secretary by the Politburo represented
as much of a generational change as the elections of Presidents
Kennedy and Clinton did in the United States. Born in 1931, Gorbachev
belonged to a numerically large cohort that had escaped Stalin’s purges
and the ravages of World War II. He had had a model career in the
Communist party, which he had joined when he was 20. When he
entered the Politburo in 1979, he became its youngest member.

278

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

Gorbachev’s generation lacked the fanaticism of the first or even
second generation of Communist leaders. It was no longer satisfied
with vague promises about a better life in the distant future. By the
1980s the time had long passed when material privation could be
legitimately blamed on the terrible destruction of World War II. This
attitude has been confirmed by information obtained from newly
opened archives which revealed that the Soviet Union had defeated
Nazi Germany despite the efforts of Stalin and the Communist party,
not because of them. This new generation was also much better edu¬
cated than earlier ones, and in particular was well aware that the Soviet
standard of living lagged far behind that in the West (and in some
cases, as with East Germany, even its satellites) and was falling still
further behind. What is perhaps most significant about Gorbachevs
early career is that he reached his political maturity during the de-
Stalinization of the 1950s, when the truth about Stalin’s crimes and
“exciting” new reforms abounded. He was the best-educated Soviet
leader since Lenin, having earned a law degree from Moscow State
University; he was also the most willing to experiment with new ideas.
If Khrushchev had wanted to cleanse the Communist system,
Gorbachev wanted it thoroughly reformed - but not abolished.

The attitudes of Stalin’s successors to his memory provide an excel¬
lent barometer for measuring the overall philosophy of their regime.
Khrushchev had attacked Stalin for executing so many party mem¬
bers and military officers, but he did not actually claim that the
purged officials had been innocent. Gorbachev condemned Stalin for
both his punishments and his fantastic allegations. Gorbachev’s policy
of glasnost, or openness, made it possible to discuss many things
in the press that had previously been taboo, such as declining health
care, crime, child abuse, suicide, poverty, and corruption. Even the
saintly Lenin was not completely exempt from criticism. By 1988 and
1989 articles in the Soviet press claimed that the crimes of the Stalin
era could be traced back to Lenin’s ideas and practices. Nevertheless,
freedom of the press under glasnost fell far short of tsarist laws after
1865, which had exempted all books over 160 pages from censorship;
after 1905 newspapers and pamphlets had been relatively free from
censorship as well.

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

279

Gorbachev’s other slogan was perestroika, or restructuring. It was a
vague reference to the need for economic reforms. To carry out such
reforms, however, he was dependent on the very people who had the
most to lose by them: Communist hard-liners, the armed forces, and
the KGB. Among the general public he could not expect much
sympathy from the older generation, especially veterans of World
War II and pensioners, who had a sentimental longing for the “good
old days” of discipline and order.

Problems of the Soviet Economy and Society

Despite the tinkering done by Khrushchev and his successors, the
Soviet economy and society during the Gorbachev years remained
much as they had been during the Stalinist era: all aspects of the
Soviet Union were still highly centralized. Gorbachev revealed how
difficult it was to make fundamental reforms when he asked in 1987:
“How can we agree that 1917 was a mistake and all the seventy years
of our life, work, effort and battles were also a complete mistake, that
we were going in the ‘wrong direction’?” 2 In the economy, the quantity
of production, even if carried out by wasteful and obsolete means,
was more important than the quality. Until Gorbachev, innovation
was more often discouraged than encouraged. With regard to
consumer goods the emphasis was still on annual increases in
quantity. Qualitative improvements required innovations and new
technology that in the short run would reduce production, and there¬
fore were seldom introduced.

The economy continued to be centrally planned, all farms were col¬
lectives (although peasants were still allowed to keep their relatively
productive private plots of land), ordinary workers were denied real
power in this workers’ paradise, and a huge bureaucracy still enjoyed
privileges undreamed of by the masses. All communications about
resources and markets took place only vertically, between factory

2 Mikhail Gorbachev, Perestroika: New Thinking for Our Country and the World
(New York, 1987), 42.

280

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

managers and central planners in Moscow. No meaningful conversa¬
tions took place horizontally, between neighboring enterprises. The
whole system was geared to satisfying the desires of the supervisory
bureaucracy, not the consumers. As a result of corruption and a cen¬
sored press, no managers or workers were laid off, and there were no
bankruptcies resulting from the demand for a product not matching
the supply. It is unlikely that central planners would even hear of such
fiascoes, because factory managers would simply falsify their reports.

Much more serious in the long run than the low productivity of
Soviet industries and the poor quality of the goods they produced was
the damage done to the environment by the reckless drive for heavy
industrialization. To create electricity, over 46,000 square miles of
often choice agricultural land was submerged by reservoirs. By the
end of the 1970s, air pollution had reached dangerous levels in over
100 cities. Soviet rivers carried 20 times more pollutants than the
Rhine, even though the latter traversed some of the most densely
populated and highly industrialized areas in the world. Evaporation
from irrigation caused the Aral Sea to lose about half its surface area,
resulting in a tremendous loss of fish and the desertification of sur¬
rounding areas. Similar degradations to the environment took place
in the Soviet satellites of east central Europe. Damage caused by air
pollution in the forests of East Germany was greater than anywhere
else in the world. All of these environmental disasters, covered up
during the Brezhnev era, were finally fully exposed in the Gorbachev
era thanks to glasnost. However, glasnost could not prevent an even
bigger catastrophe, namely the explosion at the nuclear power plant at
Chernobyl in 1986 which severely damaged the heroic image of the
military-industrial complex while creating a popular demand to end
obsessive secrecy.

The picture was no better in agriculture. Of course the Soviets
faced some natural handicaps not often mentioned in the Western
media. Much of their land was in areas that were either too cold or too
dry to be arable. Even in more naturally fertile areas, rainfall was
erratic. Nevertheless, most of the Soviet Union’s agricultural wounds
were self-inflicted. Stalin and his successors continued to insist that
farms remain collectivized even though peasants produced one-third

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

281

of the meat, 40 percent of the milk, and 55 percent of the nation’s eggs
on their private plots, which made up only 3 percent of all agricultural
land. The amount of grain grown on land belonging to the collectives
could not even keep up with the needs of the growing population.
And 10 to 15 percent of the grain and 50 to 60 percent of the fruits and
vegetables rotted in the fields, ruined during the harvest, or spoiled
on the way to the market because of poor roads and storage facilities.
Beginning in 1963, and frequently thereafter, the Soviet Union
imported much of its grain from the West. The shortfall was not due
to a lack of investment. For years, about one-quarter of all government
investment went into agriculture. Nevertheless, agricultural produc¬
tivity remained at about 15 to 25 percent of US levels.

The inefficiencies of the Soviet economy resulted in chronic short¬
ages of basic foodstuffs, adequate housing, and consumer goods that
people were willing to buy. The diet of the average Soviet citizen was
not far behind that of the average American in terms of calories.
However, 70 percent of the Soviet diet in 1965 consisted of grains and
potatoes, compared to 28 percent in the United States. Only 25 per¬
cent of the Soviet diet consisted of meat, vegetables, and fruits, and
the diet did not markedly improve in the 1970s and 1980s. Even to
obtain these meager foodstuffs and other necessities, Soviet house¬
wives had to stand in line an average of three hours a day, compared
to two hours a day in 1930. (Soviet men stood in line mostly to buy
alcoholic beverages.) As for consumer goods, the problem was not
their unavailability, but the unwillingness of Soviet shoppers to buy
what was for sale. For example, there was a shortage of decent shoes
even though 800 million pairs were produced annually, or nearly
three pairs for every citizen. The same was true of clothing.
Warehouses were full of clothes that no one would buy. In fact, on the
eve of Gorbachev’s rise to power, the accumulation of unsold goods
was rising two to three times faster than the output of industry.
Nothing else, not even the absence of civil liberties, caused so much
dissatisfaction in the Soviet Union and its satellites as the lack of
quality consumer goods. Yet it was central planning and state owner¬
ship of the means of production that were supposed to make the
Soviet system superior to all others.

282

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

The increase in the level of education received by the average Soviet
citizen only added to the general population’s aggravation. By the
1980s Soviet society no longer consisted of illiterate or semiliterate
peasants and unskilled and poorly educated industrial workers. Even
though it was far behind the most advanced Western countries, the
Soviet Union was becoming to some extent a “high-tech” society. As
late as 1959, 91 percent of the Soviet population had only an
elementary education. By 1984 that percentage had dropped to 14. In
1941 only 2.4 million people had specialized or technical education.
By 1960 there were 8 million such people. When the Soviet Union
collapsed in 1991, 31.5 million citizens had this kind of advanced
training. Moreover, whereas four-fifths of the population consisted of
peasants on the eve of the Bolshevik Revolution, only one-fourth of
the population consisted of farmers by the end of the 1980s. In
Khrushchevs time only three Soviet cities had more than 1 million
inhabitants. By the time of Gorbachevs administration that number
had risen to 22. Many of the country’s intellectuals, especially in the
late 1980s, traveled to professional meetings in the West or met with
foreign colleagues in Russia. Middle-class professionals were now
better educated than the political elite. Despite Soviet propaganda,
they were painfully aware of the Soviet Union’s lack of quality
consumer goods and general economic backwardness, and were
unwilling to tolerate it any longer. Their indispensable scientific
research also required a certain amount of intellectual freedom.

Soviet Women in the Last Years of the Regime

Perhaps the most dissatisfied people in late Soviet society were
women. Their social status had changed little since the 1920s. The
issue of female inequality had been officially “solved” since 1930, so
discussion of it was taboo in the Soviet press. Khrushchev did bemoan
the small percentage of women in the Communist party in his famous
“secret” speech of 1956, but the number continued to remain low.
Somewhat surprisingly, it was the phlegmatic Brezhnev who reopened
the issue of the proper status of women in Communist society, but

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

283

only because in the 1960s and 1970s the Soviet Union was suffering
from falling economic productivity, labor shortages, and an exceed¬
ingly low birth rate. Even more discussion about women’s issues took
place during Gorbachev’s tenure in office; but there were just as many
voices supporting women’s traditional status as there were calling for
radical change. Deeper issues such as why so few contraceptives were
available, why prostitution still existed in a socialist society, and why
abortions took place under stressful conditions remained off-limits.
In any event, even Gorbachev’s famous glasnost and perestroika made
very little difference in the day-to-day lives of Soviet women.

Women, along with men, did benefit from the Soviet Union being a
more mechanized and technological society, so that after about 1960
they were a little less likely to be engaged in heavy manual labor than in
earlier decades, and more likely to work in clerical or service positions.
However, women’s jobs were still concentrated in less desirable, or at
least more poorly paid, professions. During the 1980s women consti¬
tuted 98 percent of the nation’s janitors, 90 percent of its conveyor-belt
operators, and two-thirds of its highway construction crews. Women
continued to be strongly represented in such traditionarwomen’s” pro¬
fessions as teaching and medicine, where they made up 75 percent of
the instructors and 70 percent of the physicians. Altogether, women
held 51.5 percent of all nonagricultural jobs. As in the 1920s, they
continued to earn only 60 to 70 percent as much as men did for the
same work (about the same percentage as in the West), in part because
few of them made it into the top ranks. Teachers received little more
than half the income of skilled workers. Part of the reason for this
differential was that schools encouraged boys to study more demanding
subjects like mathematics whereas girls were steered into less presti¬
gious and less lucrative humanities subjects. Moreover, women lacked
free time for study because they needed to work outside the home and
were still responsible for all the housework, with few labor-saving appli¬
ances. Consequently, it was difficult for women to upgrade their skills
in night schools or through correspondence courses.

As indicated, women effectively held two nearly full-time jobs: one
at the workplace and the other in the home, where they still spent at
least 30 to 40 hours a week on housework (47 in East Germany), or about

284

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

twice as many as their husbands. As a result, little time was left for
bearing and raising children. Families continued to live in tiny, mostly
two-room, apartments where privacy was rare. The combination of
these factors, along with increasing urbanization, meant that the birth
rate steadily declined after the early postwar years, especially in the
1970s and 1980s, when it was barely above the replacement level. The
demographic dilemma was aggravated by a shockingly high rate of
infant morality, well above 20 per 1,000. One-time government grants
given at a child’s birth had little more impact than similar grants had
had in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Only the prospect of getting a
larger apartment seems to have had some effect on peoples desire to
have more children. Attempts by the government to increase the
number of births by denying women birth-control devices and
information on contraception - again reminiscent of the fascist
states - simply led to an enormous number of abortions, about five to
eight for every live birth, giving the Soviet Union the highest abortion
rate in the world. The procedure had been legalized, again with little
publicity, in 1955 because of the large number of illegal and dangerous
abortions taking place.

Some Soviet women tried to cope with their hard and dreary lives
by turning to alcohol; the rate of alcoholism among women became
even higher than that for men, and for women it carried a much
greater stigma. A more harmless coping device was fashion. Soviet
women spent as much money as they could afford on clothes and cos¬
metics in order to bring some color into their lives. Here was one small
way in which life for Soviet women had improved. In Stalin’s time the
wearing of unorthodox clothing could land a woman in prison.

Another way Soviet women had changed by the 1980s was that
they were much less willing to tolerate their second-class status, and
much more aware that women in the West were far better off. No
doubt with some naivety, Soviet women especially admired what they
considered to be the comparative gentlemanliness and “casual ele¬
gance” of American men, who were also much better providers than
Russian husbands. Soviet women contrasted this real or imagined
American behavior with the lack of courtesy, and even boorishness,
of Soviet men. Consequently, by the late 1980s many Soviet women

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

285

were willing to state openly that Communist-style emancipation was
a fraud which had merely turned them into beasts of burden working
at the command of the government and their husbands.

Soviet Society in the 1980s: The Balance Sheet

It would be neither accurate nor fair to end this discussion of Soviet
society by suggesting that everyone was unhappy with the system and
ardently favored radical change. Most Soviet citizens believed that
very substantial improvements had been made in the educational
system since the Bolshevik Revolution. The literacy rate for adults
was close to 100 percent, and a fairly high percentage of the population
had advanced educations. Soviet schools had helped make the USSR
a world leader in some areas, such as space exploration. The country’s
standard of living, if far behind that of the West, with a third of the
population living in poverty, was at least well above the level of the
tsarist days as well as the early post-World War II period. By 1985
almost every Soviet family owned a television set and a refrigerator,
and two-thirds owned washing machines. Most people also appreci¬
ated the security provided by the cradle-to-grave state welfare system,
including guaranteed employment, free (if poor) health care, low
prices for food and housing, and safeguards against “internal anarchy.”
They also derived some satisfaction from the Soviet Union being one
of the world’s two superpowers, which enjoyed a very considerable
influence around the world. As late as Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to
power in 1985, and possibly later, the majority of the Soviet people
supported the regime, even if only passively. They would have been
satisfied to return to something like the New Economic Policy of the
1920s with its mixture of free enterprise, state-run big industries, and
social welfare programs.

What provided the system with its relative stability, however, was
not those signs of progress that did benefit all citizens, but rather the
very real privileges enjoyed by the 18 million members of the
Communist party in the 1980s (compared to 7 million in 1953). They
were determined to pass on these perquisites to their offspring,

286

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

but by so doing they made upward social mobility nearly impossible.
Party bosses, managers of factories and collective farms, senior
military officers, research scientists, and world-class athletes lived in
their own private and carefully guarded compounds. They used spe¬
cial hospitals, which had the best in medical technology; shopped in
their own stores, which were well stocked with goods from the West;
and had their own vacation homes (dachas). Whereas ordinary
Soviets could expect to wait 10 years to buy an automobile of very
poor quality, the elite were whisked around in chauffeur-driven
black limousines. In East Germany, where the fear of revolt was
much greater than in the Soviet Union, the privileged classes also
included doctors and teachers who had access to better housing than
the rest of the population and who earned three times as much as
common workers.

The Revolt of the Satellites and
the Disintegration of the Soviet Union

The Yale historian Paul Kennedy has identified what he calls
“imperial overstretch” as the primary cause for the demise of great
powers in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Such was almost
certainly the case, at least in part, with the collapse of the Soviet
Union. Although imperial powers hope to benefit economically as
well as politically from their empires, the reverse is more likely to
be the case, especially in the long run, and most especially if the
subject nations derive few economic benefits from the empire. The
Russians were able to provide eastern Europeans with some cheap
raw materials from Siberia, and for a time the Soviets’ military might
was a welcome protection against a possibly resurgent West Germany.
Otherwise, the satellite states were well aware that their forcible
incorporation into the Soviet empire not only had cost them their
freedom but was also a drain on their economies, because they were
cut off from the markets and technology of the West. Many of the
better-educated people, especially in East Germany, bitterly resented
being denied the freedom to travel in the West (see Plate 29).

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

287

The empire was even more costly for the Soviet Union itself. To
prop up the economies of their satellites, the Soviets sold them oil at
half the world’s market price. The satellites were also expensive
militarily, because they required the presence of 31 combat-ready
divisions equipped with the most modern weapons. In theory at least,
the satellites had to be protected from a possible attack by West
Germany or from NATO as a whole. More realistically, however, the
existence of the unpopular regimes could be assured only through the
presence of Soviet tanks and bayonets. In short, the Warsaw Pact had
become more of a burden than a shield.

This critical fact was proven by an East German uprising in 1953,
the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and especially the Prague Spring
of 1968, when the Czechoslovak government of Alexander Dubcek
showed “dangerous” signs of wanting to liberalize the regime by abol¬
ishing censorship and tolerating political and social organizations not
under the control of the Communist party. Brezhnev feared these
reforms might “contaminate” the other satellites and ultimately get
completely out of control. To prevent this possibility, he announced
his doctrine that the Soviet Union and its European partners would
forcibly intervene if the existence of a Communist government were
in danger. By overthrowing the Dubcek government with troops from
the Warsaw Pact (the Soviets’ counterpart to NATO), Brezhnev in
effect acknowledged that socialism in east central Europe could be
sustained only by force. The Soviet empire thereby lost any shred of
legitimacy it might still have had. It therefore had to defend itself on
five fronts: against NATO; China; militant Islam, especially in
Afghanistan; dissidents in eastern Europe; and dissidents in the Soviet
Union itself. Even nonethnic Russians, particularly in the Baltic
republics and Ukraine, overwhelmingly did not identify themselves
as Soviet citizens and felt a suppressed enmity toward the dominant
Russian majority, often disliking their non-Russian neighbors as well.
The Russians, for their part, disliked subsidizing the less developed
Central Asian republics, while the West only had to defend itself
against the Soviet Union and its very unreliable subject nations.

As the decades rolled past, the generation that had lived through
the horrors of Nazi occupation was increasingly replaced by younger

288

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

people who had grown up in the postwar world and knew only a
peaceful and democratic West Germany. The detente policy of the
1970s pursued by the German Social Democratic chancellor, Willy
Brandt, and the US president, Richard Nixon, made it increasingly
difficult for people living in Communist eastern Europe to believe
that they were in great danger of war. The siege mentality, one of the
hallmarks of the Soviet ideology, became increasingly implausible
in the era of coexistence and even more so under glasnost. For the
Soviet Union, the possession of intercontinental ballistic missiles
rendered the buffer status of its east central European satellites
largely obsolete. They had now become almost a pure liability. The
same was even truer of faraway dependencies like Cuba and Angola,
whose economies could be maintained only with massive Soviet
assistance. Soviet citizens were proud of their country’s military
parity with the United States, which it had achieved in the 1970s.
But by the 1980s the regime was finding it increasingly difficult to
be both a warfare state and a welfare state. Likewise, it could not be
a revolutionary leader while spending between 25 and 40 percent of
its gross national product (GNP) on its military compared to 5 per¬
cent for the United States. Such expenditures also precluded
economic progress.

No one knows, of course, exactly what Mikhail Gorbachev was try¬
ing to accomplish in east central Europe in the late 1980s, perhaps in
part because, like Stalin and Khrushchev, he did not even bother to
consult the Politburo before making important decisions. The
likelihood is that he hoped to replace hard-line Communist leaders
with popular reformers. Such a change would reduce the need for
Soviet troops and expensive weapons and improve relations with the
West. The declining Soviet economy of the early 1980s made it
increasingly difficult for Russia to maintain its superpower status.
Improved relations with the West would enable the Soviet Union to
reduce its military budget substantially, with the savings being
invested in modernizing the Soviet economy and improving the stan¬
dard of living. Gorbachev was encouraged in this belief by President
Ronald Reagan, who was willing to abstain from his earlier virulent
anticommunism in order to end the arms race.

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

289

As a Marxist, however, even if a relatively enlightened one,
Gorbachev believed that class differences were far more important
than national ones. The Soviet state was, for him, a voluntary multina¬
tional union, not the result of tsarist imperialism and Soviet conquests.
He therefore badly underestimated nationalism as a centrifugal force,
not only in the satellite states, but also within the Soviet Union itself.
He believed the issue would fade away once the excesses of Stalin’s
nationality policy were replaced by a new tolerance. But nationalism
proved to be a powerful force that he could not control. The new
atmosphere of tolerance he created encouraged democratic elements
and undermined the willpower of the ruling Communist parties in
the satellite states. Furthermore, his open renunciation of the
“Brezhnev Doctrine,” and his unwillingness to support unpopular
Communist governments in eastern Europe, meant that their leaders
were now emperors with no clothes. When demonstrations broke out
in East Germany in the fall of 1989, revolutionary uprisings soon
swept away hard-line and even more moderate governments in all the
Communist countries west of Russia. These developments, although
welcomed in the West, were a blow to Gorbachev’s prestige and
authority at home.

The End of Soviet Totalitarianism

The famous eighteenth-century historian and political commen¬
tator Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his treatise on the French
Revolution of 1789 that “the most perilous moment for a bad
government is when it seeks to mend its ways. Only consummate
statecraft can enable a king to save his throne when, after a long
spell of oppressive rule, he sets to improving the lot of his subjects.” 3
Soviet leaders since Stalin had been aware of this danger. None of
them, including Gorbachev, had been elected to their office by a
popular vote. They all relied on force, intimidation, or propaganda
to push through most reforms.

3 Quoted in Time, January 1,1990,44.

290

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

It would be grossly inaccurate to assume, of course, that the Soviet
Union of the late 1980s had exactly the same characteristics as the
Soviet Union of the early 1950s. Stalinist terror had disappeared, but
overt political opposition could still land a dissident in a work camp.
Glasnost was clearly a step toward freedom of speech. However, until

1989 there remained, in the Soviet Union, many sacred cows, among
them the monopoly of power by the Communist party, central
planning, and state ownership of industries and property.

Only in 1989 did the fundamentals of Soviet totalitarianism,
established by Lenin and entrenched by Stalin, begin to disappear.
More open access to official archives revealed that the Baltic states had
been occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 as a result of a secret clause
in the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939. This revelation com¬
pletely undermined the legitimacy of the annexations and led to their
secession in 1990. Other revelations resulting from glasnost seriously
eroded the Soviet myth and destroyed the very legitimacy of the regime
itself. In short, glasnost revealed problems but did not solve them.

In March 1989 the first free elections were held in the Soviet Union
since the elections of November 1917 for the ill-fated Constituent
Assembly - which, it will be recalled, the Bolsheviks broke up after its
first and only meeting. Thirty-seven key Communist bosses were
voted out of office when they could not garner 50 percent of the vote
even though in most cases they ran unopposed. In December 1989
Gorbachev, an admirer of Lenin, attacked one of the most sacrosanct
aspects of totalitarianism since Lenin himself, the infallibility of the
ruling party, when he announced that “we no longer think that we are
the best and are always right, that those who disagree with us are our
enemies.” 4 This radical change in policy was made official in February

1990 when the “leading role of the Communist party” was removed
from the Constitution. It was followed by widespread defections from
the party. An explosion of new non-Communist labor unions, cultural
associations, and opposition political parties followed the party’s loss
of its monopoly of power. Meanwhile, glasnost caused the Soviet
people to lose their fear of another pillar of the dictatorship, the KGB.

4 Quoted in Time, February 19,1990,31.

The Collapse of Soviet Totalitarianism

291

The election of the Communist party dissident Boris Yeltsin to the
chairmanship of the Russian National Parliament in 1990 proved to
be the final blow to both Gorbachev’s leadership and the Soviet Union
itself. Yeltsin proceeded to remove the Russian Federation from the
Soviet Union and to recognize the independence of the former Soviet
republics. Gorbachev was now a man without a country to rule. He
could have resisted Yeltsins maneuvers only by force, something he
was loath to do.

Even after monumental changes in its ideology, the Communist
Party still had powerful assets. Although the party lost its property,
every factory, office, and military regiment had a party cell, and party
members continued to staff all important government and economic
positions. Much like Stalin, the party had also destroyed - or pre¬
vented from arising - an alternative socioeconomic system. The
combination of totalitarianism and bureaucracy had led to lethargy
and inefficiency and had stultified the Soviet economy and culture.
Seventy years of suppression of every form of private initiative had
left most Soviets feeling that they were helpless and passive wards of
the state who depended on it for housing, health care, electricity, and
a variety of subsidized prices. Moreover, the suppression of any orga¬
nized opposition meant that there was no obvious alternative to total¬
itarian Communist rule. Throughout the Soviet period and for
centuries before, work was what most Russians were compelled to do.
With that compulsion removed, there was no work ethic to take its
place. Peasants, for example, when given the opportunity to own
private farms, preferred to remain on collectives so they could collect
their pensions. “Business,” “profits,” and “property” had become dirty
words. The Communist system had succeeded not only in polluting
the soil, water, and air; it had also polluted the mind.

At midnight on December 31, 1991 the flag of the Soviet Union
came down for the last time over the Kremlin. Few countries in world
history had ever collapsed so completely in wartime as the Soviets
had in peacetime.

Lessons and Prospects

They will remain horrifying reminders ...

The totalitarian regimes are best known for their dogmatism and
their doctrinaire fanaticism, and properly so. It was, for example, dog¬
matism that caused one disaster after another in the Soviet Union:
war communism; collectivization; an exaggerated emphasis on heavy
industrialization; the purges; an unwillingness by Stalin to listen to
the warnings of his advisers about a Nazi invasion; and a lack of free¬
dom in education, the press, and the arts.

In contrast to the Soviet Union, where doctrinaire fanaticism was
directed mostly at its own citizens, ideological rigidity in the fascist
states was aimed at external enemies and therefore had little appeal to
other nationalities. Italy’s foreign policy objectives were grotesquely
overambitious for what was still a largely underdeveloped country.
Once Italy was confronted by a major military power like Great
Britain, or even a minor power like Greece, its lack of realism and

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

Lessons and Prospects

293

military strength were exposed almost immediately. In Germany,
ideological dogmatism led to the expulsion of the country’s most
intellectually and commercially creative minority, the Jews, and a war
of expansion which eventually united most of the worlds major
powers against it.

The totalitarian states were not always dogmatic. If necessary they
could display a pragmatism that at times made them appear almost
“normal.” When the Soviet Unions industrial production dropped to 13
percent of the country’s prewar level in 1920, Lenin realized that it was
time to give up his radical war communism, which had led to the con¬
fiscation of peasant foodstuffs and an overhasty nationalization of
industries. Instead, he turned to a much more realistic New Economic
Policy, which quickly restored the country’s economy to prewar levels.
With the country’s very existence at stake following the Nazi invasion in
1941, Stalin was capable of scrapping his utopian Marxism in favor of
leading a “Great Patriotic War.” Although he followed an expansionist
foreign policy after the war, this policy was, in his own mind at least, in
part defensive. He always respected the West’s sphere of influence and
never took steps that were likely to lead to a third world war.

Mussolini was shrewd enough to know that to retain power he
needed the support, or at least the neutrality, of the king, the church,
and the middle and upper classes. Consequently, he was willing to
sacrifice all of his earlier positions, even his anticlericalism, when the
political climate changed, in order to gain support and to weaken
opposition. The Concordat with the Vatican in 1929 was the best
example of his pragmatism.

Even the supposed arch fanatic Adolf Hitler was perfectly capable
of being pragmatic on any number of occasions. The failure of the
Beer Hall Putsch caused him to abandon force in favor of legal means
in seeking the chancellorship. He renounced the German-speaking
South Tyrol in order to win the friendship of Mussolini. He toned
down his anti-Semitism in order not to frighten the more respectable
elements of the middle class, and even left Jewish businessmen alone
for some time after he came to power in order not to disrupt the
German economy. As chancellor, he posed for years as a simple
veteran of World War I who wanted nothing more than to avoid a

294

Lessons and Prospects

repetition of that bloodbath. Until 1939 his foreign policy was limited
to relatively modest goals, which nearly all Germans enthusiastically
supported, and which even the West felt moral qualms about
opposing. Despite his bombastic espousal of Nordic racial superiority,
he had no problem allying with such “racially inferior” states as Japan,
Croatia, and Slovakia. During the first two years of the war he tried
repeatedly to make peace with Great Britain and to keep the United
States out of the war.

The Triumph of Dogmatism

Nevertheless, it would be very safe to say that pragmatism, no matter
how successful and popular at home, was nothing more than a ploy
for the totalitarian dictators, which they were eager to abandon at the
very first opportunity. Exceptions were made only for things like
entertainment, in which they had relatively little interest. Lenin and
his followers considered the NEP to be a strictly temporary compro¬
mise of Bolshevik principles. Stalin backed off his collectivization
policy and the Great Purges only when chaos had reached intolerable
limits. As soon as the tide of battle clearly shifted in 1943, he resur¬
rected the cult of Stalin. After the war he restored prewar Stalinist
orthodoxy in all areas of life and made sure that the Soviet people
remained free from the contaminating influences of the liberal West.
By the time of his death in 1953 some 20 million Soviet citizens had
died from starvation or political execution and nearly 27 million had
been killed in the war, partly as a result of his inept preparations and
strategy. His successors, though they lacked his incredible brutality
and occasionally even made gestures toward improving the lot of
long-suffering consumers, made sure that the essentials of Soviet
totalitarianism remained intact. These vital components were the
infallibility of Marxist ideology, the political monopoly of the
Communist party, the command economy, and labor camps for
anyone who stepped too far out of line.

Mussolini retained his pragmatism longer than the other dictators.
Nevertheless, he used the balance of power between Hitler and the

Lessons and Prospects

295

West to realize his imperialistic dreams, beginning with Ethiopia.
When it looked like the West was thoroughly defeated in June 1940,
he again seized the opportunity to attack France. Likewise, when
Greece appeared to be an easy target in 1940 he invaded it, even
though there was little to gain and a great deal to lose by the campaign.

Hitler also abandoned his pragmatism as soon as he thought it safe
to do so. By 1938 he believed that German rearmament had pro¬
gressed far enough that he could risk pursuing a more aggressive
foreign policy. He was also convinced that the German economy had
fully recovered so that the expertise of Jewish businessmen was no
longer essential. Therefore, he allowed the “Aryanization” of Jewish
property to accelerate. By the summer of 1941, when the war in Russia
appeared to be won, Hitler no longer felt it necessary to show any
restraint toward Soviet civilians, especially Jews. After successfully
stopping a German retreat in the winter of 1941-2, he was more con¬
vinced than ever that the war could be won through sheer willpower.

The Structural Flaws of Totalitarianism

Aside from the dictators’ willingness to surrender to their own ideol¬
ogies, with fatal consequences, the very structure of the totalitarian
dictatorships made their failure a near certainty. The most significant
aspect of the totalitarian systems was the nearly limitless power it
placed in the hands of the dictators. They could do almost anything
they chose without fear of domestic, institutionalized restraints. This
generalization applies most obviously to Stalin and least to Mussolini.
Stalin was able to ignore the passionate love 120 million Soviet peas¬
ants had for their private farms when he forced them onto hated col¬
lectives. He killed anyone he wished, no matter how high they were in
the hierarchy of the Communist party or the military. He ignored
countless warnings about an impending German invasion and left
Russia inadequately defended when the awful moment arrived.

Mussolini ignored the opposition of the Catholic Church and of
academicians when he rammed through anti-Semitic laws in 1938. It
was he alone who decided that Italy should invade Ethiopia, aid

296

Lessons and Prospects

Franco’s rebels in Spain, attack France in 1940, invade Greece in the
fall of the same year, and declare war on Yugoslavia in April 1941, the
Soviet Union in June, and the United States in December.

Although Hitler enjoyed the support of a good many Germans in
his anti-Semitic policy, the majority would have opposed his more
extreme policies had they been fully informed of them. We still do not
know Hitler’s exact role in the Holocaust, but there is no question that
he was always the driving force in the persecution of Jews. His prewar
foreign policy was opposed by his senior military and diplomatic
advisers almost every step of the way. It was he alone who decided on
war in 1939, and it was he alone who had the power to keep it going
long after it had become clear to any half-rational person that the war
was hopelessly lost.

Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler also regarded loyalty to themselves to
be a far higher virtue in others than competence. Corruption and
incompetence could easily be tolerated as long as they did not become
public scandals. All three men also liked to give overlapping respon¬
sibilities to their subordinates so that they alone could preside over
the mess that they had created, and so none of their subordinates
would emerge with the kind of clear-cut authority that might challenge
their own.

The monopoly status of the totalitarian parties, the infallibility of
their ideologies, and their control over all forms of cultural expression
and public opinion meant that they remained free of public criticism.
This freedom from responsibility inevitably led to theft, corruption,
nepotism, arrogance, bribery, graft, and a lack of accurate information
about public sentiment. Spying and police reports were only partial
solutions to this dilemma because informants were tempted to tell
their superiors what they wanted to hear. With the brief exception of
Stalin during the later stages of World War II, the dictators knew only
what they wanted to believe, not what they needed to know.

Spying was simply one way in which labor was wasted in the total¬
itarian dictatorships. On the eve of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in
1989, East Germany had over 91,000 full-time secret policemen
( Stasi ), along with 174,000 informants who were kept busy for 40
years spying on 17 million people and writing 6 million documents

Lessons and Prospects

297

(enough to fill 125 miles of shelves), most of which the police them¬
selves regarded as worthless. (Not even the Third Reich had wasted so
much manpower in spying on its own citizens.) However, total con¬
trol of a country’s population necessitated the creation of a huge
bureaucracy. Bureaucracies were doubly useful to the dictators
because they represented a form of patronage. Well-paid bureaucrats
enjoying a host of privileges were not likely to lead a revolution, but
they were a tremendous drain on the economies of the states, and
created much popular cynicism.

All three totalitarian states tried to substitute propaganda for a free
press, with only mixed results. The general public were well aware that
the news was censored and therefore were not inclined to believe it
even when it was absolutely true. Wild rumors and secretly listening
to foreign radio broadcasts filled the vacuum of reliable information.
The dictators themselves became both the beneficiaries and the vic¬
tims of their own propaganda. Totalitarian propaganda does appear to
have convinced the Soviet, Italian, and German people that Stalin
(and especially Lenin), Mussolini, and Hitler were no ordinary mor¬
tals. Whatever the faults of their political parties, which were often
well known by the general public, the great dictators either did not
know of them, or at least were not responsible for them. Presumably it
was low-level Communist officials who were to blame for the brutal¬
ities of collectivization and the purges, not Stalin, who once he became
aware of the abuses intervened to stop them. (The Chinese held the
same convictions with regard to Mao Zedong.) Fascist officials might
be corrupt and grasping, but surely not Mussolini. Fanatical SA men
might get carried away and burn down Jewish synagogues and wreck
Jewish shops, but not with the approval of Hitler. Hermann Goering,
not Hitler, was responsible for the failures over Britain in 1940 and
Stalingrad in 1942. However, propaganda could not convince the
Russians that they were materially better off than the West, could not
make Germans lust for war in 1939 or cajole them into believing that
Italy was a powerful ally, and could not persuade the Italians that they
were a warlike people. It could, however, convince the dictators that
they were indeed infallible and that anyone who disagreed with them
was at best wrongheaded if not an outright enemy.

298

Lessons and Prospects

Oddly enough, totalitarian propaganda was for a long time more
effective abroad that it was at home. Many Westerners believed that
Bolshevism was a noble experiment in socialism and that rumors of
famine during collectivization were vicious lies. Britain and France
were convinced that Italy was a truly great power at the time of the
Ethiopian War and that to close the Suez Canal to Italian ships would
entail great risks. The French believed in 1936 that by themselves they
could not dislodge Germany from the recently remilitarized
Rhineland, and both Britain and France felt that it would be far too
costly to invade Germany while the Wehrmacht was off in the East
obliterating Poland.

The totalitarian states also had mixed results with their economies.
The abundance of cheap forced labor in the Soviet Union encouraged
wasteful labor-intensive methods. Collectivized Soviet agriculture
was a disaster from start to finish. Heavy industry made some
impressive gains, and probably enabled the Soviet Union to survive
the Nazi onslaught during World War II. The hell-bent drive toward
industrialization, however, left scars on the environment that will
endure for decades if not centuries. Soviet consumers were treated
with contempt, and housing was so flimsy that even relatively minor
earthquakes in the 1990s brought scores of buildings down like houses
of cards.

The Italian economy enjoyed moderate success during the 1920s,
but was slower than Germany or Britain to recover from the Depression.
Corporativism, far from destroying class divisions, exacerbated them.
Germany enjoyed what at the time seemed like spectacular growth
after Hitler came to power, but the recovery from the Depression had
actually begun in 1932, and was not nearly as impressive as the German
“economic miracle” after World War II.

The level of prosperity, or the lack of it, had a great deal to do with
the overall popularity of the totalitarian regimes. Nothing enhanced
Hitler’s prestige so much as the rapid decline in the unemployment
rate. Nothing was so detrimental to the reputation of the Soviet
regime as its inability to produce high-quality consumer goods and
food. Mussolini’s imperialistic adventures ultimately also had a nega¬
tive effect on the economy and the Duces popularity.

Lessons and Prospects

299

The economic failures the totalitarian regimes suffered were often
temporarily compensated by diplomatic and military victories, or by
the need to defend the nation against invaders. Mussolini gave an
enormous, albeit temporary, boost to the sagging popularity of the
Fascist regime by conquering Ethiopia in 1935-6 and by persuading
Hitler to attend the Munich Conference in 1938. Germans who were
lukewarm or even hostile toward the Nazis were thrilled by the blood¬
less takeover of Austria and the Sudetenland, and by the easy military
victories over Poland and especially France. By the time nearly all
Germans were thoroughly disillusioned with the Nazi regime, follow¬
ing the defeat at Stalingrad, most of them felt they had no choice but
to defend their country against the approaching Allies, especially in
the face of the Allied demand for unconditional surrender. No matter
how disgusted the Soviet people were with the terror and incompe¬
tence of Stalins government, they were forced by Nazi barbarities to
defend their country in 1941. The Soviet Union’s growing military
and political stature in the postwar world, together with the country’s
regular successes in the Olympic Games, also provided some vicar¬
ious pleasure for people whose lives were otherwise bleak and
impoverished. Athletic successes in the Olympic Games and other
international competitions were also important to Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy, and after World War II to East Germany, Cuba, and
Communist China.

Whatever their temporary and partial economic, diplomatic, and
military successes, the totalitarian states displayed a special talent for
making enemies both at home and abroad. The Bolsheviks virtually
declared war against the world and much of their own population
when they came to power in 1917. They made no secret of their desire
to overthrow the democratic and capitalistic governments of the
West. They killed, deported, or sent to brutal labor camps the old aris¬
tocracy, the often highly educated bourgeoisie, the kulaks, and anyone
else who did not toe the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist line. The Soviet
regime ultimately frightened most of the world and after World War
II provoked the creation of the most enduring military alliance in
world history, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The
Nazis forced out two-thirds of some of their most creative and

300

Lessons and Prospects

productive citizens, the Jews, and killed the remainder. After 1939
they declared war against most of the world. In so doing they brought
about the most improbable of alliances, the coalition between the
Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States. World War II not only
resulted in the downfall of the Third Reich, but also ended centuries
of European global domination. Mussolini was, for a long time, much
more cautious, but even he eventually alienated the small but highly
productive Italian Jewish community, and then brought down on
Italy the wrath of the West by allying himself with Germany.

The Totalitarian Legacy

The legacy of each of the totalitarian states differs substantially from
the others. Because totalitarianism in Italy was only skin deep, its
legacy has been undoubtedly the slightest. The most obvious
consequence of Fascism was the determination of most Italians not to
have a strong executive authority. As a result, the country has had on
average about one prime minister a year since the overthrow of
Mussolini. Nevertheless, the rejection of Fascism has not been
complete. It is a startling fact that a married granddaughter of
Mussolini, using her maiden name Alessandra Mussolini, was elected
to the Italian Parliament in the early 1990s, a position she still held in
2013. Also in 2013 a second granddaughter, Edda Negri Mussolini,
ran for a seat in the Italian Parliament while defending her grandfa¬
ther’s record with the exception of his anti-Jewish legislation. It is
hard to imagine a grandchild of Hitler suddenly appearing and, using
his grandfather’s surname, being elected to the Bundestag (Federal
Parliament) of Germany. Moreover, a public opinion poll conducted
in the late 1990s revealed that more than 60 percent of Italians believed
that Fascism had been a “good regime” whereas only 0.2 percent
described it as “brutal.” Mussolini’s name can still be found etched in
stone on many monuments around Rome and other Italian cities and
even on the now Greek island of Rhodes.

The rise to the premiership of the richest man in Italy, the billion¬
aire media magnate Silvio Berlusconi in 1994,2001, and most recently

Lessons and Prospects

301

April 2008 can be seen as reflecting a growing disgust with Italy’s
weak post-Mussolini governments. The stagnant economy (making
it the “sick man of Europe”) and deteriorating education and health¬
care systems have created a growing desire to return to a strong
leader and greater stability and prosperity. These feelings are per¬
fectly understandable. What alarmed some observers, however, was
Berlusconi’s control of most of Italy’s private television stations and
indirect control of state-run television, which created a conflict of
interest. Corruption also remains a problem in Italy as does hostility
toward illegal immigrants from Albania, North Africa, and the
Middle East.

The Third Reich produced unexpected results after World War II,
which would have astounded and infuriated the Fiihrer. The cata¬
strophic end to the war and the horrifying revelations about the
Holocaust thoroughly discredited racism, anti-Semitism, and extreme
nationalism as respectable middle-class values, not only in Germany
but also in most of the rest of Europe and North America. They have
survived only among radical fringe groups or in disguised forms.
Authoritarianism and great power politics have been equally compro¬
mised among most Germans. Although extremist political parties
have occasionally arisen in postwar Germany, their votes have
remained small and they have disappeared within a few years. No one
could have imagined in 1945 that a half-century later the United
States and other countries would be practically begging Germany to
play a larger role in world affairs.

The German “economic miracle” of the postwar years helped lead
to over 60 years of stable democratic government headed most of the
time by just two major parties, the Christian Democratic Union (the
successor of the Center party) and the Social Democratic party, with
smaller parties often participating in coalition governments. This
simplification of the multiparty system that had existed in the Weimar
Republic has produced political stability and social peace alongside a
strong desire for European integration even during economic slumps.
The ethnic Germans of east central Europe, some of whom wished to
be united with Germany, especially during the Depression, were
either forced to emigrate to Germany after the war or have done so

302

Lessons and Prospects

voluntarily since the collapse of the Soviet satellite system in 1989,
thus settling one of the troubling international issues of the late 1930s.

The only minority problem still facing Germany is the large and
still not fully assimilated group of Turks who began coming to
Germany as “guest workers” in the 1950s. The younger generation
lack good education and speak neither German nor Turkish particu¬
larly well. Their relatively high crime and unemployment rates are
occasionally fodder for right-wing parties who, like the Nazis, cannot
imagine that Turks or other non-Europeans could ever be real
Germans. However, this issue cannot be equated with the hysterical
emotions created by the Jewish “problem” during the interwar period.

Some social and political benefits have also inadvertently arisen
from the ashes of Hitler’s Third Reich. His ruthless extermination of
much of the German aristocracy following the failed July 20
assassination plot in 1944, the massive movement of population from
the lost territories east of the Oder-Neisse Rivers, and the social
demands of postwar reconstruction have brought about a reduction of
class and regional differences that has been conducive to democracy.
Hitler was also indirectly responsible in part for the establishment of
the state of Israel in 1948, which resulted from the widespread
sympathy for Jews created by the Holocaust. Finally, the corruption
that was endemic in all the totalitarian states simply had less time to
become rooted in German society because the Third Reich existed for
a far shorter time than either Fascist Italy or Communist Russia.

It is much more difficult, however, to think of anything positive
arising from the Communist experiment in human engineering.
Certainly the Soviet regime succeeded in spreading literacy and
industrial skills to tens of millions of people. The more backward
parts of the Soviet Union, such as the Central Asian republics, began
their existence as independent states that were more industrially
advanced and with a much better educated populace, especially
women, than lived in nearby Muslim states like Afghanistan, Iraq,
eastern Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, and China. Women also derived some
benefits in gaining access to jobs previously closed to them and to
child-care facilities. They paid a heavy price for these changes, how¬
ever, by having to hold down two jobs: one at home and one in the

Lessons and Prospects

303

marketplace. The fall of the Soviet Union unleashed a pent-up hunger
to read whatever they wished and to travel wherever they wanted. It is
no longer so certain, however, that the intense reaction to tyrannical
authority that existed in the 1990s will create a popular resistance
against any party or government claiming monopolistic powers for
itself. None of this is certain as of this writing (in 2014), however, and
the electoral successes of Communist parties in east central Europe,
which have merely changed their names, are not encouraging. Even
worse, however, are the consequences of expelling, or more often
killing, the most hard working and creative people of the former
Communist countries: the old aristocracy (who at the very least
served as patrons of the arts); the bourgeoisie; Jews; intellectuals;
kulaks; and even leading Communist party members. The survivors
learned that their best chance of staying alive was to avoid espousing
unorthodox and creative ideas that might appear “subversive” and
“dangerous.” Instead, they waited passively for orders from faraway
bureaucrats who had little knowledge of local conditions.

The destruction of the environment in the former Communist
states also finds no parallel in the former fascist states. The Nazis
actually showed an enlightened attitude toward protecting the envi¬
ronment by establishing strict pollution controls. They brought about
a horrible destruction to the lives and property of other countries and
ultimately to themselves, but at least properties could often be
repaired or replaced in a matter of a few years. The Communists
wrought degradation to the environment, for example at Chernobyl,
which will take decades, at the very least, to repair. It may be even
more difficult for them to root out the corruption, lying, and confor¬
mity that the Communist system encouraged. This task may be
somewhat easier in the former satellite states, where Communism
was imposed from the outside and lasted for only about half as long
as it did in the Soviet Union.

Looking to the future, the late and unlamented Taliban regime in
Afghanistan, along with the continued existence of the ultra-Stalinist
regime in North Korea, are proof that totalitarianism is not simply a
bygone curiosity of the twentieth century. However, of the three

304

Lessons and Prospects

regimes examined in this book, totalitarianism is least likely to reap¬
pear in Germany. Democracy in Germany is no longer in its infancy.
It now has a record of over six decades of success and has been tested
at times by considerable economic stress. Isolated pockets of racism
still exist, but the Nazis so discredited racism that it is highly unlikely
that any major political party will adopt it in the future as an integral
part of its ideology. The German people have also learned from both
the accomplishments and the failures of the Weimar Republic. It is
entirely possible, however, that a more nationalistic and assertive
regime could appear in the not too distant future, but almost certainly
not one with a racist or a militaristic ideology. It is one of the supreme
ironies of history that postwar Germany has been able to gain the
economic, and to some degree political, standing in Europe, by peace¬
ful means that Hitler was unable to achieve through warfare. Mussolini
was never quite so thoroughly discredited as Hitler, so Fascism, in a
disguised form, has somewhat better prospects of re-emerging in
Italy, especially if corruption and inept political leadership continue
unchecked.

The fate of the former Soviet Union is the biggest question. Unlike
Germany and Italy, there is no democratic tradition in this part of
Europe. The brief experiment in democracy between the two revolu¬
tions in 1917 was a miserable failure. Before and after 1917, there has
only been a long and dismal history of autocracy and tyranny, fre¬
quently accompanied by brutality. Unlike Nazism in Germany and
Fascism in Italy, Communism in the Soviet Union disappeared more
with a whimper than a bang, as did the notion that socialism could
create a just society. Much of what the Communists created, such as
collective farms, a highly centralized economy with faraway “bosses,”
and even numerous statues of Lenin survived the overthrow of the
regime. Many of the factories had obsolete equipment and the
economic situation was worsened by a mass emigration of scholars
during the 1990s. The privatization of property is still ongoing. (For
an example of the new face of Russian commercialism, see Plate 30.)
To be sure, some Russians, often the former directors of formerly
state-owned factories, have become their very wealthy owners. But
they have created enormous envy in those people who are less

Lessons and Prospects

305

fortunate. The purge of Communists from the government and the
economy was even less thorough than the purge of Fascists and
Nazis in Italy and Germany respectively. Some Russians, especially
pensioners whose salaries have plummeted, still look on the relative
stability of the regimes of Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev as the “good
old days.” For example, an opinion poll of 1,600 adults taken in 2003
revealed that 53 percent approved of Stalin, whereas only 33 percent
held a negative view of the dictator. New state textbooks “hail Stalin as
‘the most successful Russian leader ever’ and a state builder along the
lines of Peter the Great and Bismarck.” 1 The same mixed views of
Stalin persisted in 2013, with Russians viewing him as both a great
leader who helped industrialize the country and lead the country to
victory over Nazi Germany, and also a mass murderer. More impor¬
tant, however, is the fact that few Russians today admire his era and,
unlike Lenin, there are few statues honoring the great dictator.

Therefore it is probably safe to say that a great majority of Russians
would not embrace a party with a history of totalitarian control,
corruption, terror, and concentration camps, as was illustrated by the
defeat of the Communist candidate, Gennady Zyuganov (see Plate 31),
in the Russian presidential election of 1996. They are probably less
gullible in the face of government lies, and many people are out¬
spoken critics of the state-owned television. Moreover, considerable
economic progress was made under President Vladimir Putin who
came to power at the end of 1999. By 2007 Russia had the tenth largest
gross domestic product (GNP) in the world and was the seventh in
purchasing power. During Putins first premiership and presidency
(1999-2008) real wages more than tripled and poverty was cut in half.
The 20-year decline in Russia’s population was finally reversed in
2009.

However, much of Russia’s prosperity is based on a fivefold increase
in the price of oil and gas, which constitute the major part of Russia’s
exports, and the increase in prosperity has been confined mostly to
the largest cities such as Moscow and St Petersburg. Poverty is still
widespread in rural areas, among pensioners, the unemployed, and

Time , December 31,2007/January 7,2008,86.

306

Lessons and Prospects

those attempting to live on the minimum wage which is among the
lowest in the world. Socioeconomic inequality has risen dramatically,
although the same is true in many other countries including the
United States. The middle class has grown, and the number of people
living in poverty has declined from 30 percent in 2000 to 13 percent
in 2013. However, the poverty line of $200 per month is little more
than one-fifth of the $930 poverty line in the United States. Even
Putin has admitted that if international standards of poverty were
applied to Russia the number of poor would double. An economic
downturn, together with a continuation of the high crime rate would
make the emergence of an extreme nationalistic and an even more
authoritarian regime by no means unthinkable.

However, the “good old days” that Russia now seems to be
returning to are not the days of Lenin and Stalin, with their purges,
unrestrained terror, and hostility to free enterprise, but the era of
tsarist Russia. Not only have numerous Russian churches been rebuilt
or refurbished, but the Russian Orthodox Church has also become a
de facto state religion, with other Christian denominations being
barely tolerated if at all. Putin, who is the first Christian believing
Russian leader since the tsars, is seen by most Russians as a welcome
return to political stability. With a 70 percent approval rating in
April 2014 (albeit down from 81 percent in 2007) he appears to
be retaining his hold on power during his second presidency which
began in May 2012. He has eschewed the charismatic leadership of
the totalitarian dictators - especially Hitler and Mussolini - in favor
of a humorless but pragmatic management style. He does, however,
resemble Mussolini in trying to create a macho, superhero image by
posing shirtless, interacting with wild animals, scuba diving, and
flying high-speed airplanes. And like the dictators he has restored a
sense of national pride and much of Russia’s international influence.
As in today’s Italy, freedom of the press is threatened in Russia by the
murder of several journalists who had been outspoken critics of the
regime, and by government-owned television stations which deliber¬
ately slant the news, although newspapers remain at least partially
free. The judicial courts, which had been independent, albeit corrupt,
under Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, have again become rubber

Lessons and Prospects

307

stamps for dubious administrative decisions, and the rule of law is not
uniformly maintained throughout the country. Equally prone to use
the rubber stamp has been the Russian Parliament (Duma). The
Russian diaspora - the roughly 20 million Russians who suddenly
found themselves in foreign and often unfriendly countries after the
breakup of the Soviet Union - could also become an issue for extreme
Russian nationalists in the future, as indeed it already has in the
Crimean peninsula. President Putin seems determined to make
Russia a hegemonic power in what Russians call the “near abroad,” if
not indeed a global power. His struggle to keep Ukraine within the
Russian sphere of influence is simply part of these ambitions.

None of these problems currently facing the former totalitarian
dictatorships should be exaggerated, however. They do not begin to
approach in intensity the economic and political problems of early
post-World War I central and eastern Europe or the political
extremism wrought by the Great Depression in the early 1930s. Nor
should political success necessarily be measured in terms of condi¬
tions existing in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, or other
Western democracies.

The totalitarian regimes of twentieth-century Europe will be
remembered, as long as history is studied, for their unprecedented
brutality and destructiveness. Their few intended accomplishments
ironically involved precisely those matters that were relatively nonpo¬
litical. Their ultimate downfall was the result of the implementation
of their extreme dogmatic ideologies. They will remain horrifying
reminders of the consequences of placing dictatorial power in the
hands of unscrupulous men.

Bibliographical Essay

The number of books related to the three totalitarian dictatorships is
enormous. Therefore, only the most useful of the standard works will
be mentioned here. Books containing especially helpful bibliogra¬
phies will be noted for readers who wish to investigate specialized
topics.

Most of the books dealing specifically with the concept of totali¬
tarianism were published in the 1950s and 1960s during the height of
the Cold War, when it was fashionable to draw parallels between the
Soviet Union and the fascist dictatorships. However, other books have
also been published since the topic began to regain its popularity in
the 1980s. One of the first to deal with the subject and still a classic is
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1973),
first published in 1951. Three other books which trace the origins and
evolution of the concept are Jacob L. Talmon, The Origins of
Totalitarian Democracy (New York, 1960); Stephen P. Soper,
Totalitarianism: A Conceptual Approach (Lanham, MD, 1985); and

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

Bibliographical Essay

309

more recently, Abbott Gleason, Totalitarianism: The Inner History of
the Cold War (New York, 1995).

Carl J. Friedrich and Zbigniew K. Brzezinski describe the basic
characteristics of totalitarianism in their classic book Totalitarian
Dictatorship and Autocracy (rev. edn, Cambridge, MA, 1965). Michael
Curtis has written an excellent interpretive essay on various aspects of
the subject in Totalitarianism (New Brunswick, NJ, 1979), as has Hans
Buchheim in Totalitarian Rule: Its Nature and Characteristics
(Middletown, CT, 1968). A reappraisal of the subject is Ernest A.
Menze, ed„ Totalitarianism Reconsidered (Port Washington, NY,
1981).

A substantial number of books have systematically compared
totalitarianism with other systems or the different totalitarian
states with each other. One recent work is Popular Opinion in
Totalitarian Regimes: Fascism, Nazism, Communism, edited by Paul
Corner (Oxford, 2009), which argues that the totalitarian dictators
did not rely entirely on terror or brainwashing to remain in power.
Michael Geyer and Sheila Fitzpatrick contend in Beyond
Totalitarianism: Stalinism and Nazism Compared (Cambridge, UK,
2009) that Hitler depended on his oratory to achieve power whereas
Stalin relied on the Communist party and the state apparatus.
Stalinism and Nazism: History and Memory Compared (Lincoln, NE,
1999), edited by Henry Rousso, maintains that the legitimacy of the
totalitarian regimes rested in their promise of a better future. Older
examples are Raymond Aron, Democracy and Totalitarianism (New
York, 1969); Otis C. Mitchell, Two Totalitarians: The Systems of Hitler
and Stalin Compared (Dubuque, IA, 1965); C. W. Cassinelli, Total
Revolution: A Comparative Study of Germany under Hitler, the Soviet
Union under Stalin, and China under Mao (Santa Barbara, CA, 1976);
Aryeh L. Unger, The Totalitarian Party: Party and People in Nazi
Germany and Soviet Russia (London, 1974); and William Ebenstein
and Edwin Fogelman, Today’s Isms: Communism, Fascism, Capitalism,
Socialism (9th edn, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1985). A more recent
anthology is Ian Kershaw and Moshe Lewin, eds., Stalinism and
Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge, UK, 1997). A work
containing the original writings of people like Lenin, Stalin,

310

Bibliographical Essay

Khrushchev, Mussolini, Goering, and Hitler is Carl Cohen, ed„
Communism, Fascism and Democracy: The Theoretical Foundations
(3rd edn, New York, 1996).

During the 1960s and 1970s the broad concept of totalitarianism
temporarily gave way to the narrower political philosophy of fascism,
which was espoused not only in Italy and Germany but, during its
heyday in the 1930s, also in less successful movements in nearly all
countries west of the Soviet Union. The pioneering study of this sub¬
ject was Ernst Nolte, Three Faces of Fascism: Action Francaise, Italian
Fascism, National Socialism (New York, 1966), which was first pub¬
lished in German in 1963. The best of the newer books is Michael
Mann, Fascists (New York, 2004). See also Robert O. Paxton, The
Anatomy of Fascism (New York, 2004) and Roger Griffin, The Nature
of Fascism (New York, 1991). Several theoretical studies of fascism
have been written by A. James Gregor, including The Ideology of
Fascism: The Rationale of Totalitarianism (New York, 1969) and
Interpretations of Fascism (Morristown, NJ, 1974), in which he dis¬
cusses the social, psychological, and economic causes of fascism.

Most books on fascism are anthologies in large part because it is
virtually impossible for scholars to be experts on fascism in more
than one country. Probably the best of the group is Walter Laqueur,
ed„ Fascism: A Reader’s Guide: Analyses, Interpretations, Bibliography
(Berkeley, CA, 1976). Walter Laqueur has also edited International
Fascism, 1925-1945 (New York, 1966). See, as well, Stuart J. Woolf,
ed„ European Fascism (New York, 1968), which covers fascist move¬
ments in several countries, and, by the same editor, The Nature of
Fascism (New York, 1969), which is more descriptive of the movement
as a whole; and the massive tome, Who Were the Fascists? Social Roots
of European Fascism (Bergen, Norway, 1980), edited by Stein U.
Larsen, Bernt Hagtvet, and Jan Petter Myklebust.

Other books comparing various forms of fascism include
Alexander J. De Grand, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: The “Fascist”
Style of Rule (London, 1995); Michael T. Florinsky, Fascism and
National Socialism: A Study of the Economic and Social Policies of the
Totalitarian State (New York, 1938); and Stanley G. Payne, Fascism:
Comparative Approach toward a Definition (Madison, WI, 1980).

Bibliographical Essay

311

A good complete bibliography of works on fascism can be found in
Philip Rees, Fascism and Pre-fascism in Europe, 1890-1945: A
Bibliography of the Extreme Right (Brighton, UK, 1984).

Turning specifically to Italian Fascism, a very readable survey of
Italian history including its Fascist episode is Modern Italy: 1871 to
the present (3rd edn, Harlow, UK, 2008) which maintains that Fascism
could not outlast Mussolini. More focused is Philip Morgan, Italian
Fascism, 1919-1945 (New York, 1995). A survey is R. J. B. Bosworth,
Mussolini’s Italy: Life under the Dictatorship, 1915-1945 (New York,
2006). A brief general study is Alexander De Grand, Italian Fascism:
Its Origins and Development (3rd edn, Lincoln, NE, 2000), which con¬
tains a superb bibliography. An invaluable reference work is Phillip V.
Cannistraro, ed„ An Historical Dictionary of Fascist Italy (London,
1975). Topically organized is the anthology edited by Roland Sarti,
The Ax Within: Italian Fascism in Action (New York, 1974). For works
published during the Fascist era, see William Ebenstein, Fascist Italy
(New York, 1939), which covers ah aspects of the regime, and the
more political and popular Mussolini’s Italy by Herman Finer (New
York, 1965), originally published in 1935. An excellent book concen¬
trating on the Fascist party is Dante C. Germino, The Italian Fascist
Party in Power: A Study in Totalitarian Rule (Minneapolis, 1959).
John P. Diggins reveals how popular Mussolini was in the United
States up to the Ethiopian War in Mussolini and Fascism: The View
from America (Princeton, NJ, 1972). This conclusion is also affirmed
by Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi in Fascist Spectacle (Berkeley, CA,
1997). A recent historiographical study of Fascist Italy is R. J. B.
Bosworth, The Italian Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives in the
Interpretation of Mussolini and Fascism (London, 1998).

On the broad subject of Soviet history a wide-ranging survey which
emphasizes how the Bolsheviks were a beleaguered minority in a hos¬
tile world following the revolution is Martin Malia, The Soviet
Tragedy: A History of Socialism in Russia, 1917-1991 (New York,
1994). One of the newest works is The Rise and Fall of Communism in
Russia by Robert V. Daniels (New Haven, CT, 2007), who argues that
Soviet authorities had to control everything that might cast doubt on
its revolution. Russian national pride was the real ideology of the

312

Bibliographical Essay

Communist party, not Marxism-Leninism. A survey of Soviet history
is Peter Kenez, A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the
End (Cambridge, UK, 1999). Another excellent introduction is Adam
B. Ulam, A History of Soviet Russia (Fort Worth, 1978). Much more
detailed is the interesting interpretation by the “emigre” historians
Mikhail Heller and Alexander Nekrich, Utopia in Power: The History
of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present (New York, 1986). A good
brief interpretive essay is Theodore H. Von Laue, Why Lenin? Why
Stalin? Why Gorbachev? (3rd edn, New York, 1993). Older and more
specialized works which are still of value are John A. Armstrong, The
Politics of Totalitarianism: The Communist Party of the Soviet Union
from 1934 to the Present (New York, 1961); Herbert McClosky and
John E. Turner, The Soviet Dictatorship (New York, 1960), which ana¬
lyzes the distinguishing features of Soviet Communism; and Raymond
A. Bauer, Alex Inkeles, and Clyde Kluckhohn, How the Soviet System
Works: Cultural, Psychological and Social Themes (New York, 1960),
which is based on extensive interviews with refugees who had recently
escaped from the Soviet Union. Two other works are the revisionist
book by Stephen Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience (Oxford,
1986) and Paul Dibb, The Soviet Union: The Incomplete Superpower
(Urbana, IL, 1988), which concentrates on domestic and international
problems faced by the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

The Nazi phenomenon can only be understood within the broad
context of modern German history. Among the books with such a
scope, the most recent are Dietrich Orlow, A History of Modern
Germany, 1871 to the Present (3rd edn, Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2002)
and Holger H. Herwig, Hammer or Anvil: Modern Germany 1648-
Present (Lexington, MA, 1994). Limited to the Second and Third
Reich is Gordon A. Craig, Germany, 1866-1945 (New York, 1980).
Somewhat older, but still of value is Hajo Holborn, A History of
Modern Germany, 1840-1945 (New York, 1969). The impact of the
Great War on German society is covered in Richard Bessel, Germany
after the First World War (Oxford, 1993). Good introductory text¬
books on the Third Reich are Alan F. Wilt, Nazi Germany (Wheeling,
IL, 1994), which has an excellent bibliography; Jackson J. Spielvogel,
Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 2001),

Bibliographical Essay

313

which also has a good list of suggested readings; K. Hildebrand, The
Third Reich (London, 1984); Andreas Hillgruber, Germany and the
Two World Wars (Cambridge, MA, 1981); and Robert E. Herzstein,
Adolf Hitler and the German Trauma, 1913-1945: An Interpretation of
the Nazi Phenomenon (New York, 1974). Two extremely well-
researched and detailed volumes on the Nazis by Richard J. Evans are
The Coming of the Third Reich (London, 2003) and The Third Reich in
Power (London, 2005).

Among the textbooks for more advanced students, the newest is
The Third Reich: Charisma and Community (Harlow, UK, 2008) by
Martin Kitchen, who asserts that Hitler’s authority rested on his suc¬
cess. More detailed is Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New
History (New York, 2000). Very comprehensive is Klaus R Fischer,
Nazi Germany: A New History (New York, 1998). Still excellent are
Karl D. Bracher, The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and
Effects of National Socialism (New York, 1970) and Martin Broszat,
The Hitler State: The Foundations and Development of the Internal
Structure of the Third Reich (White Plains, NY, 1981), both of which
have a strong political emphasis. For a colorful eyewitness account,
see William L. Shirer, The Nightmare Years, 1930-1940 (Toronto,
1984). How the Nazis’ racial ideology affected German society can be
seen in Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial
State: Germany 1933-1945, (Cambridge, UK 1991). Claudia Koonz
maintains in The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, MA, 2003) that
German anti-Semitism was more a result of than a cause for Nazism.
Excellent descriptions of daily life in Nazi Germany can be found in
Bernt Engelmann, Hitler’s Germany: Everyday Life in the Third Reich
(New York, 1986); Richard Bessel, ed., Life in the Third Reich (Oxford,
2001); Pierre Aycoberry, The Social History of the Third Reich, 1933-
1936 (New York, 1999); and Timothy W. Mason, Social Policy in the
Third Reich (Providence, RI, 1993). Important documents related to
Nazi Germany are found in Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham,
eds„ Nazism, 1919-1945: A History in Documents and Eyewitness
Accounts, vol. I, The Nazi Party, State, and Society, 1919-1939 (New
York, 1984); and Louis L. Snydor, ed„ Hitler’s Third Reich: A
Documentary History (Chicago, 1981). An excellent bibliography of

314

Bibliographical Essay

works published up to 1980 is Helen Kehr and Janet Langmaid, eds.,
The Nazi Era, 1919-1945: A Select Bibliography of Published Works
from the Early Roots to 1980 (London, 1982). A succinct historio¬
graphical study is Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and
Perspectives of Interpretation (London, 1985).

Nazi Germany has been the subject of numerous scholarly anthol¬
ogies since at least the 1950s. The most recent are Panikos Panayi, ed„
Weimar and Nazi Germany: Continuities and Discontinuities (Harlow,
UK, 2001) and Neil Gregor, ed., Nazism (New York, 2000). Other
recently published works are David F. Crew, Nazism and German
Society, 1933-1945 (London, 1994) and Thomas Childers and Jane
Caplan, eds., Reevaluating the Third Reich (New York, 1993). See also
Hans Mommsen, ed„ From Weimar to Auschwitz (Princeton, NJ,
1991); Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., Nazism and the Third Reich (New
York, 1972); and Allan Mitchell, ed., The Nazi Revolution (Lexington,
MA, 1990).

On the ideological foundations of the three totalitarian states

described in this book, see J. Lucien Radel, Roots of Totalitarianism:
The Ideological Sources of Fascism, National Socialism, and
Communism (New York, 1975); Robert C. Tucker, ed„ Essays in
Historical Interpretation (New York, 1977), which has some excellent
articles on Bolshevism and Stalinism; Renzo de Felice, Fascism: An
Informal Introduction to Its Theory and Practice (New Brunswick, NJ,
1976); and Eberhard Jackl, ed„ Hitler’s World View: A Blueprint for
Power (Cambridge, MA, 1987), in which the author argues that
Nazism was intellectually coherent.

The literature on the Russian revolutions of 1917 is immense, and
only a few of the more important works can be alluded to here. On the
overthrow of the Romanovs see Leonard Schapiro, The Russian
Revolutions of 1917: The Origins of Modern Communism (New York,
1984), which also shows how the Communists consolidated their
power. On Lenin’s role in the Bolshevik Revolution see Adam Ulam,
The Bolsheviks: The Intellectual, Personal and Political History of the
Triumph of Communism in Russia (Cambridge, MA, 1998); Bertram
D. Wolfe, Three who Made a Revolution (New York, 2001; first pub¬
lished in 1948), which also covers Trotsky and Stalin; and Christopher

Bibliographical Essay

315

Hill , Lenin and the Russian Revolution (London, 1971; first published
in 1947).

Lenin, not surprisingly, has been the subject of numerous biogra¬
phies. The most critical one, based on recently opened Russian
archives, is Dmitri Volkogonov, Lenin: A New Biography (New York,
1994). Equally detailed but older is Louis Fischer, The Life of Lenin
(New York, 1964). A good brief introduction is Helene Carrere
d’Encausse, Lenin: Revolution and Power (London, 1982). The Lenin
cult is examined by Nina Tumarkin in Lenin Lives! The Lenin Cult in
Soviet Russia (Cambridge, MA, 1983). Three books that examine
Lenin’s contribution to the formation of Soviet totalitarianism are
Moshe Lewin, ed., The Making of the Soviet System: Essays in the
Social History of Interwar Russia (New York, 1985); Samuel Farber,
Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy (London,
1990); and Leonard Schapiro, The Origin of the Communist Autocracy:
Political Opposition in the Soviet State, First Phase, 1917-1922 (2nd
edn, Cambridge, MA, 1977). A much more comprehensive and
up-to-date biography of the Communist leader is Robert Service,
Lenin: A Biography (Cambridge, MA, 2000), which depicts Lenin as
both a Marxist ideologue and an opportunist.

Several books deal with the establishment of the Fascist dictator¬
ship, but by far the most detailed, recent, and objective is Adrian
Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power: Fascism in Italy, 1919-1929 (2nd edn,
Princeton, NJ, 2004). Other books on the subject were written by
Italian contemporaries and include Gaetano Salvemini, ed„ The
Origins of Fascism in Italy (New York, 1973; with an introduction by
Roberto Vivarehi), which is based on lectures delivered by the author
in 1942; and Angelo Tasca, The Rise of Italian Fascism (New York,
1966; first published in 1938).

The Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis have long attracted
numerous historians. A bibliographical guide to the period is Peter D.
Stachura, ed., Weimar Era and Hitler, 1918-1933: A Critical
Bibliography (Oxford, 1979). A thought-provoking survey is Detlev
Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (New
York, 1992). Another brief survey is A. J. Nicholls, Weimar and the
Rise of Hitler (rev. edn, New York, 2000). Peter Fritsche in Germans

316

Bibliographical Essay

into Nazis (Cambridge, MA, 1998) shows how the Nazis appealed to
the Germans’ desire for a sense of unity. The Nazi Machtergreifung
(London, 1983), edited by Peter D. Stachura, is an anthology that
examines the attitude of numerous groups, such as women, the edu¬
cated elite, the industrial elite, the army, and the churches, toward the
Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis. Jay W. Baird shows how
the Nazis exploited the deaths of early Nazi “martyrs” in To Die for
Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (Bloomington, IN, 1990).
Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. destroys the Marxist contention that big
businessmen were responsible for the Nazi takeover in German Big
Business and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford, 1985). The beginnings of the
Nazi party are examined in the first volume of Dietrich Orlow’s two-
volume History of the Nazi Party (Pittsburgh, 1969). More biograph¬
ical are Charles B. Flood, Hitler: The Path to Power (Boston, 1989);
Otis C. Mitchell, Hitler Over Germany: The Establishment of the Nazi
Dictatorship (1918-1934) (Philadelphia, 1983); and Konrad Heiden,
Der Fuehrer: Hitler’s Rise to Power (Boston, 1944), written by a jour¬
nalist who followed Hitler from the beginning of his career. The Nazi
takeover and consolidation of power is covered in Eliot Barculo
Wheaton, The Nazi Revolution 1933-1935: Prelude to Calamity
(Garden City, NY, 1969); and Henry Ashby Turner, Jr., Hitler’s Thirty
Days to Power (Cambridge, MA, 2000), which argues convincingly
that Hitler’s appointment was not inevitable.

During the 1970s and 1980s historians devoted a great deal of
attention to the social origins of Nazi party members. This effort
had been initiated in 1934 when the Columbia University sociologist
Theodore Abel sponsored an essay contest on why Nazis had joined
the party, published as Why Hitler Came into Power (Cambridge, MA,
1986; first published in 1938). Peter Merkl further analyzed these
essays in Political Violence under the Swastika: 589 Early Nazis
(Princeton, NJ, 1975). The same scholar investigated why young men
joined the SA in The Making of a Stormtrooper (Princeton, NJ, 1980).
More recently Conan Fischer supports the position that the Nazi
party had attracted support from all socioeconomic classes 1933 in
The Rise of the Nazis (3rd edn, Manchester, UK, 2002). Other books
of a sociological orientation are Thomas Childers, The Nazi Voter:

Bibliographical Essay

317

The Social Foundations of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1933 (Chapel
Hill, NC, 1984); Richard F. Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton,
NJ, 1982); Michael H. Kater, The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of
Members and Leaders, 1919-1945 (Cambridge, MA, 1983); and Max
H. Kele, Nazis and Workers: National Socialist Appeals to German
Labor, 1919-1933 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1972).

The rise of the Nazis has been examined not only at the national
level, but regionally as well. Good local studies include Geoffrey
Pridham, Hitler’s Rise to Power: The Nazi Movement in Bavaria, 1923-
1933 (New York, 1973); Johnpeter Horst Grill, The Nazi Movement in
Baden, 1920-1945 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1983); Bruce F. Pauley, Hitler
and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1981); the classic work by William Sheridan Allen,
The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town
(rev. edn, New York, 1984); and Jeremy Noakes, The Nazi Party in
Lower Saxony, 1921-1933 (London, 1971).

Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler have all been the subject of numerous
biographies. A book that compares the stages in life of Stalin and
Hitler is Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (New York,
1992). Two recent comparative studies are Robert Gellately, Lenin,
Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (New York, 2007) and
Richard J. Overy, The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Russia
(New York, 2004). Gellately has also written Stalin’s Curse: Battling for
Communism in War and Cold War (New York, 2013) in which he
argues that Stalin believed that Russia’s victory in World War II had
proved the superiority of the Soviet system. The newest study of Stalin
is Robert Service, Stalin: A Biography (Cambridge, MA, 2004).
Another relatively new study devoted to all aspects of Stalins rule is
Stalin’s Russia by Chris Ward (2nd edn, London, 1993). Four brief but
more reliable, analytical, and up-to-date biographies are Robert
Conquest, Stalin: Breaker of Nations (New York, 1991); Albert Marrin’s
popular Stalin: Russia’s Man of Steel (New York, 1988); Jonathan Lewis
and Phillip Whitehead, Stalin: A Time for Judgment (New York, 1990);
and Helene Carrere d’Encausse, Stalin: Order through Terror (London,
1981). Much more detailed are Dmitri Volkogonov, Stalin: Triumph
and Tragedy (New York, 1991); Alex de Jonge, Stalin and the Shaping

318

Bibliographical Essay

of the Soviet Union (New York, 1986); and Adam B. Ulam, Stalin: The
Man and His Era (New York, 1973). Probably the best biography of
Stalin is the two-volume work by Robert C. Tucker, Stalin as a
Revolutionary, 1879-1929 and Stalin in Power: The Revolution from
Above, 1928-1941 (New York, 1973,1992). Taking advantage of newly
accessible sources, especially as they pertain to the purges, is Walter
Laqueur, Stalin: The Glasnost Revelations (New York, 1990). Stalins
own views on various political and economic issues as seen in his
speeches can be found in his Problems of Leninism (Moscow, 1953).
Arguing that Stalin could be a revolutionary, realist, and cynic all at
once is Hiroaki Kuromiya, Stalin (New York, 2005). Good anthologies
with contrasting views of Stalin are contained in all three editions of
Robert V. Daniels, ed„ The Stalin Revolution (3rd edn, Lexington,
MA, 1990); G. R. Urban, ed„ Stalinism: Its Impact on Russia and the
World (New York, 1982); and T. H. Rigby, ed„ Stalin (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, 1966).

The volume of literature on the life of Mussolini is much more
limited than for the other totalitarian dictators. The newest is Benito
Mussolini: The First Fascist (New York, 2005) by Anthony L. Cardoza,
who claims that Mussolini insisted on making all big decisions him¬
self because he did not trust the competence of others. Also new is
Mussolini and Italian Fascism (Harlow, UK, 2008) by Giuseppe
Finaldi, who believes that Mussolini thought that he could never rest
on his laurels. Probably the most complete biography is R. J. B.
Bosworth, Mussolini (London, 2002). More controversial but highly
readable is Denis Mack Smith, Mussolini: A Biography (New York,
1982). A more popular work is Jasper Ridley, Mussolini: A Biography
(New York, 1997). Older works include Laura Fermi, Mussolini
(Chicago, 1966); Christopher Hibbert, Benito Mussolini: The Rise and
Fall of II Duce (Harmondsworth, UK, 1965); and Ivone Kirkpatrick,
Mussolini: A Study in Power (New York, 1964). Two standard works
on Mussolini’s early years are Gaudens Megaro, Mussolini in the
Making (Boston, 1938) and A. James Gregor, Young Mussolini and the
Intellectual Origins of Fascism (Berkeley, CA, 1979). Although not a
full-fledged biography, Talks with Mussolini (Boston, 1933), by the
German journalist Emil Ludwig, still has interesting revelations about

Bibliographical Essay

319

Mussolini’s views on a wide range of topics when he was near the
height of his popularity. A detailed account of the development of the
Italian armed forces, along with a brief account of Italy’s prewar
foreign policy, can be found in John Gooch, Mussolini and His
Generals: The Armed Forces and Fascist Foreign Policy 1922-1940
(New York, 2007).

The literature on Hitler is staggering, although the number of
first-rate comprehensive biographies is surprisingly small. The new¬
est and most complete study is the massive two-volume work by Ian
Kershaw, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris and Hitler, 1936-1945: Nemesis
(New York, 1998, 2000), which, however, contains no dramatic new
thesis. Kershaw has also written a brief introduction to the Nazi leader
in his book Hitler (London, 1991). Joachim C. Fest, Hitler (New York,
1975) is still probably the most readable one-volume biography. Alan
Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (rev. edn, New York, 1961) remains
a standard work even though it was first published more than 60 years
ago. More popular and anecdotal is John Toland, Adolf Hitler
(New York, 1976). Two psychoanalytical studies of Hitler, which have
been criticized for being founded on much guesswork, are Robert G. L.
Waite, The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler (New York, 1977) and
Rudolph Binion, Hitler among the Germans (New York, 1976). The
latest psychological study is Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophet
by Fritz Redlich, MD (Oxford, 1998), which contains some inter¬
esting information on Hitler’s health after 1941. A historiographical
account of the literature on Hitler that also corrects many myths is
The Hitler of History by John Lukacs (New York, 1998).

A fascinating but frequently unreliable way to trace Hitler’s career
is to read books by people who knew him best, starting with Hitler’s
own semiautobiographical book Mein Kampf (Boston, 1943; first
published in 1925, 1927). Hitlers Table Talk, 1941-1944: His Private
Conversations (New York, 2000) reveals the Fiihrer’s opinion on an
almost infinite variety of subjects. His only close teenage friend,
August Kubizek, wrote Young Hitler: The Story of Our Friendship
(London, 1954). The Harvard-educated Ernst Hanfstaengl discussed
their close association between 1921 and the parting of their ways in
1934 in Hitler: The Missing Years (New York, 1994). Otto Wagener

320

Bibliographical Essay

wrote about their relationship in the late 1920s and early 1930s in
Hitler: Memoirs of a Confidant (New Haven, CT, 1985), which has
been edited by Henry Ashby Turner, Jr. For Hitler’s years in power the
best eyewitness account is Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (Old
Tappen, NJ, 1997; originally published in German in 1969). Speer and
his relationship with Hitler is closely analyzed by Gitta Sereny in
Albert Speer: His Battle with the Truth (New York, 1995). A recently
published work emphasizing Soviet interests in Nazi Germany is
Henrik Eberle and Matthias Uhl, eds„ The Hitler Book: The Secret
Dossier Prepared for Stalin from the Interrogation of Hitler’s Personal
Aides (New York, 2007). For verbatim texts of Hitler’s speeches, see
Max Domarus, ed„ Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932-1945, 4
vols. (Wauconda, IL, 1990-2).

Secondary sources are, of course, also indispensable for the study
of Hitler. The most recent work is Brigitte Hamaan, Hitler’s Vienna:
A Dictator’s Apprenticeship (New York, 1999), which has relatively
little new information about Hitler himself, but presents a fascinating
picture of the Habsburg capital during his sojourn there. On his
youth and early career up to 1933, see Bradley F. Smith, Adolf Hitler:
His Family, Childhood, and Youth (Stanford, CA, 1967), in which
the author rejects the theory that the young Hitler could be identified
as a monster in the making; Helm Stierlin, Adolf Hitler: A Family
Perspective (New York, 1976); Werner Maser, Hitler: Legend, Myth
and Reality (New York, 1971); and Eugene Davidson, The Making of
Adolf Hitler (New York, 1977). Excellent interpretive essays on
wide-ranging aspects of Hitler’s life include Sebastian Haffner, The
Meaning of Hitler (Cambridge, MA, 1978) and Eberhard Jackl, Hitler
in History (Hanover, NH, 1984). Two books showing how Americans
living in Germany viewed Hitler and the Nazis are the bestselling In
the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s
Berlin by Erik Larson (New York, 2011) and Hitlerland: American
Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power by Andrew Nagorski (New
York, 2012). Two books which show both the limitations of Hitler’s
power and his indispensability to the Nazi movement are Edward N.
Peterson, The Limits of Hitler’s Power (Princeton, NJ, 1969); and
Joseph L. Nyomarkay, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi Party

Bibliographical Essay

321

(Minneapolis, 1967). Hitler’s career, as well as other top Nazi leaders,
are covered in Ronald Smelser and Rainer Zitelmann, eds„ The Nazi
Elite: 22 Biographical Sketches (London, 1993) and Joachim C. Fest,
The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of the Nazi Leadership (New
York, 1999).

The economic aspects of the Soviet Union have been one of the

most carefully analyzed aspects of the regime. A recent general study
is Alec Nove, An Economic History of the USSR, 1917-1991
(Harmondsworth, UK, 1992). The principles of the Soviet economy
have been described by Robert W. Campbell, The Soviet Type
Economies: Performance and Evolution (Boston, 1973). The most
important economic institutions and problems are covered by
Marshall Goldman in The Soviet Economy: Myth and Reality
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968). On housing see Irina Papeno, Stories of
the Soviet Experience: Memoirs, Diaries, Dreams (Ithaca, NY, 2009).
Books that describe the consequences of Stalin’s collectivization of
Soviet farms are Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet
Collectivization and the Terror-Famine (New York, 1986); Sheila
Fitzpatrick, Stalins Peasants: Resistance and Survival in the Russian
Village after Collectivization (New York, 1994); the gripping first¬
hand account of Miron Dolot, Execution by Hunger: The Hidden
Holocaust (New York, 1985); and M. Wayne Morris, Stalin’s Famine
and Roosevelt’s Recognition of Russia (Lanham, MD, 1994).

The economies of the fascist dictatorships have attracted far less
attention from historians than almost any other aspect of life. On
Fascist economic policies, see A. James Gregor, Italian Fascism and
Developmental Dictatorship (Princeton, NJ, 1979) and Roland Sarti,
Fascism and the Industrial Leadership in Italy (Berkeley, CA, 1971).
Two recent studies which both argue that the Nazi economic recovery
preceded accelerated rearmament are Dan P. Silverman, Hitler’s
Economy: Nazi Work Creation Programs, 1933-1936 (Cambridge,
MA, 1998) and Avraham Barkai, Nazi Economics: Ideology, Theory,
and Policy, translated by Ruth Hodass-Vaschitz (New York, 1996).
A brief overview of Germany’s economic revival can be seen in
R. J. Overy, The Nazi Economic Recovery, 1932-1938 (London, 1982).
On the relationship between big business and the Nazi regime see

322

Bibliographical Essay

Arthur Schweitzer, Big Business in the Third Reich (London, 1964).
A personal approach is Ronald Smelser’s excellent biography of
Robert Ley, Hitler’s Labor Leader (New York, 1988). A long section on
Nazi economic policies can also be found in Franz Neumann,
Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933-
1944 (3rd edn, New York, 1966).

On totalitarian propaganda, Nazi Germany has nearly monopo¬
lized the attention of historians. Most general histories of the Soviet
Union do not even list the topic in their indexes although Adam
Ulam, A History of Soviet Russia (Fort Worth, 1978) is an exception.
However, propaganda in the early years of the Soviet Union has been
well covered in Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Commissariat of Enlightenment:
Soviet Organization of Education and the Arts under Lunarchsky,
October 1917-1921 (Cambridge, MA, 1970) and Peter Kenez, The
Birth of the Propaganda State (Cambridge, MA, 1985). The propagan-
distic uses of Soviet film can be seen in Richard Taylor, The Politics of
Soviet Cinema, 1917-29 (Cambridge, UK, 1979). Peter Kenez, in
Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin
(London, 2001), argues that Soviet films failed in their attempt to get
Soviet citizens to work harder. In “Mussolini: Artist in Propaganda,”
History Today 9 (1959): 223-32, Denis Mack Smith argues that
Mussolini was so successful a propagandist that he convinced himself
that Italy was truly a great power. Edward R. Tannenbaum, The Fascist
Experience: Italian Society and Culture, 1922-1945 (New York, 1972)
has a chapter entitled “Popular Culture and Propaganda” (pp.
213-47).

By contrast, the titles relating to Nazi propaganda are almost end¬
less. Two good introductions are Z. A. B. Zeman, Nazi Propaganda
(2nd edn, London, 1973); and Ernest K. Bramsted, Goebbels and
National Socialist Propaganda (East Lansing, MI, 1965). David Welch
has published several works on Nazi propaganda including The Third
Reich: Politics and Propaganda (London, 1993) and two edited works,
Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1983) and
Nazi Propaganda: The Power and the Limitations (Totowa, NJ, 1983).
Another study of Nazi films is Hilmer Hoffman, The Triumph of
Propaganda: Film and National Socialism, 1933-1945 (Providence,

Bibliographical Essay

323

RI, 1996), which argues that newsreels and documentaries were the
most important aspects of film propaganda. A more recent overview
of Nazi films is Susan Tegel, Nazis and the Cinema (London, 2007).
Oron J. Hale has described The Captive Press in the Third Reich
(Princeton, NJ, 1964); and Ian Kershaw examines the Fuhrermythos in
The Hitler Myth: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford, 1987).

Works on the fine arts in the Soviet Union are scarce. However, an
excellent book that compares art and architecture in all three totali¬
tarian states is Igor Golomstock, Totalitarian Art in the Soviet Union,
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (New York, 1990). On Soviet literature
there are Edward J. Brown, Russian Literature since the Revolution
(3rd edn, Cambridge, MA, 1982) and Gleb Struve, Russian Literature
under Lenin and Stalin, 1917-1953 (Norman, OK, 1971). For Italy
there are Victoria De Grazia, The Culture of Consent: Mass
Organization of Leisure in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, UK, 1981);
Edward Tannenbaum, The Fascist Experience: Italian Society and
Culture, 1922-1945 (New York, 1972); and Marcia Landy, Fascism in
Film: The Italian Commercial Cinema, 1931-1943 (Princeton, NJ,
1986).

For culture and society in Nazi Germany a recent survey is Lisa
Pine, Hitler’s “National Community’’: Society and Culture in Nazi
Germany (London, 2007). See also National Socialist Cultural Policy,
edited by Glenn R. Cuomo (New York, 1995), in which it is argued
that the arts benefited financially from Nazi support, but creativity
was suppressed; George L. Mosse, ed., Nazi Culture: Intellectual,
Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich (New York, 1966); David
Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi
Germany, 1933-1939 (New York, 1997); Richard Grunberger, The
12-Year Reich: A Social History of Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 (New
York, 1971); Berthold Hinz, Art in the Third Reich (New York, 1979);
and Barbara Miller Lane, Architecture and Politics in Germany, 1918-
1945 (2nd edn, Cambridge, MA, 1985). Alan E. Steinweis shows the
attempt of the German government to influence artists and enter¬
tainers in Art, Ideology, and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich
Chambers of Music, Theater, and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill, NC,
1993). See also Glenn R. Cuomo, ed., National Socialist Cultural Policy

324

Bibliographical Essay

(New York, 1995). The ambiguous attitudes of the Nazis toward music
are revealed by Erik Levi in Musicin the ThirdReich (New York, 1994)
and Michael H. Kater, Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits (New
York, 2002).

On education and youth in the Soviet Union, see George S.
Counts, The Challenge of Soviet Education (New York, 1957). George
Kline, ed., Soviet Education (New York, 1957) is a collection of reports
by former teachers and students in the Soviet Union. See also James
Riorden, Sport, Politics and Communism (New York, 1991). For Italy
there are Tracy H. Koon, Believe, Obey, Fight: Political Socialization of
Youth in Fascist Italy, 1922-43 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1985) and the older
but still useful L. Minio-Paluello, Education in Fascist Italy (London,
1946).

Books on education and youth in Nazi Germany are plentiful.
A general work on education is Gilnier W. Blackburn, Education in
the Third Reich (Albany, NY, 1985). Geoffrey J. Giles, Students and
National Socialism in Germany (Princeton, NJ, 1985) focuses on
German universities. Alan D. Beyerchen, Scientists under Hitler:
Politics and the Physics Community in the Third Reich (New Haven,
CT, 1977) looks at how scientists were affected by the regime. On the
youth movement in general see Walter Z. Laqueur, Young Germany:
A History of the German Youth Movement (New York, 1962). On the
Hitler Youth there are Peter D. Stachura, Nazi Youth in the Weimar
Republic (Santa Barbara, CA, 1975); Gerhard Rempel, Hitler’s
Children: The Hitler Youth and the SS (Chapel Hill, NC, 1989); and
Michael H. Kater, Hitler Youth (Cambridge, MA, 2004). Two personal
accounts are Alfons Heck, A Child of Hitler: Germany in the Days
when God Wore a Swastika (Frederick, CO, 1985); and Horst Kruger,
A Crack in the Wall: Growing Up under Hitler (New York, 1982).

The status of women in the totalitarian dictatorships was badly
neglected by historians prior to the 1980s. Thereafter, however, a sub¬
stantial number of books have appeared. On Soviet women, see
Barbara Evans Clements, Daughters of Revolution: A History of
Women in the USSR (Wheeling, IL, 1994); Mary Buckley, Women and
Ideology in the Soviet Union (Ann Arbor, MI, 1989); Wendy Z.
Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and

Bibliographical Essay

325

Social Life, 1917-1936 (New York, 1993); and Francine Plessix, Soviet
Women: Walking the Tightrope (New York, 1990). Marcelline Hutton
argues in Russian and West European Women, 1860-1939 (Lanham,
MD, 2001) that Soviet women gained equal educational and job
opportunities, but still suffered from low pay. On women in Fascist
Italy, the only good book in English is Victoria de Grazia, How Fascism
Ruled Women: Italy, 1922-1945 (Berkeley, CA, 1992). Jill Stephenson
pioneered the study of women in the Third Reich with her Women in
Nazi Society (New York, 1975), followed by her Nazi Organization of
Women (Totowa, NJ, 1981). A prize-winning book in the field is
Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and
Nazi Politics (New York, 1981). A more recent book on a similar topic
is Lisa Pine, Nazi Family Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford, 1997). Brief
biographies of famous Nazi women can be found in Women of the
Third Reich by Anna Maria Sigmund (Richmond Hill, Ont„ 2000).
On womens fashions see Irene Guenther, Nazi Chic ? Fashioning
Women in the Third Reich (New York, 2004).

The area of health in totalitarian societies has been virtually
monopolized by historians of Nazi Germany, no doubt in large mea¬
sure because of the Nazis’ interest in biology. An exception is Donald
Filtzer, The Hazards of Urban Life in Late Stalinist Russia: Health,
Hygiene, and Living Standards, 1943-1953 (New York, 2010). Several
excellent works have appeared recently on Nazi health policies and
doctors. By far the most fascinating is Robert N. Proctor, The Nazi
War on Cancer (Princeton, NJ, 1999), which shows that the Nazis
were decades ahead of other countries in fighting the disease. Proctor
has also written Racial Hygiene: Medicine under the Nazis (Cambridge,
MA, 1988). Also of interest are Michael Kater, Doctors under Hitler
(Chapel Hill, NC, 1989) and R. J. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical
Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York, 1986). Stefan Kuhl
has shown the affinity between eugenics in Nazi Germany and the
United States in The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism and
German National Socialism (New York, 1994). Various aspects of the
Nazi appeal to the masses are covered by Shelley Baranowski, Strength
through Joy: Consumerism and Mass Tourism in the Third Reich (New
York, 2004).

326

Bibliographical Essay

Religion in the totalitarian states has also attracted a number of
scholars. A brief introduction on Religion in the USSR has been writ¬
ten by Robert Conquest (London, 1968). The difficult life of the
Russian Orthodox Church under Communism has been examined by
John S. Curtiss in The Russian Church and the Soviet State, 1917-1950
(Boston, 1953). Other religious groups are studied by Walter Kolarz
in Religion in the Soviet Union (London, 1961). On church-state rela¬
tions in Italy see Daniel A. Binchy, Church and State in Fascist Italy
(London, 1941; reprinted New York, 1970 with a new preface);
Richard A. Webster, The Cross and the Fasces: Christian Democracy
and Fascism in Italy (Stanford, CA, 1961); and Anthony Rhodes, The
Vatican in the Age of the Dictators, 1922-45 (London, 1973). For
Germany, see Victoria Barnett, For the Soul of the People: Protestant
Protest against Hitler (Oxford, 1992); John S. Conway, The Nazi
Persecution of the Churches (New York, 1968); Richard Steigmann-
Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945
(New York, 2003); and Guenter Lewy, The Catholic Church and Nazi
Germany (New York, 1964).

The literature on terror in the totalitarian states is huge, especially
for the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany where it was most com¬
monly employed. A broad survey of the secret police in the USSR is
Boris Levytsky, The Uses of Terror: The Soviet Secret Police, 1917-1970
(New York, 1972). The secret police in both the Soviet Union and its
satellites is covered by Jonathan R. Adelman, Terror and Communist
Politics: The Role of the Secret Police in Communist States (Boulder,
CO, 1984). Conquest has described the Soviet purges in The Great
Terror: A Reassessment (New York, 1990). How Stalin used the murder
of Sergei Kirov to settle political scores and terrorize the population is
described in great detail by Matthew E. Lenoe in The Kirov Murder
and Soviet History (New Haven, CT, 2010). Robert W. Thurston main¬
tains that the Soviet population actually believed that there were
numerous “enemies of the people” during the Terror in Life and Terror
in Stalins Russia, 1934-1941 (New Haven, CT, 1996). The background
to the purges can be found in J. Arch Getty, Origins of the Great Purges:
The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered (Cambridge, UK, 1985).
How Soviet citizens responded to the terror can be seen in Sheila

Bibliographical Essay

327

Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism, Ordinary Life in Extraordinary Times:
Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York, 1999). The role of the masses in
denouncing “wreckers” can be found in Wendy Z. Goldman, Terror
and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression
(New York, 2007). A wide-ranging anthology on various aspects of
terror during the 1930s is J. Arch Getty and Robert T. Manning, eds.,
Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, UK, 1993). A gripping
story of life in a Russian labor camp by an author who survived eight
years in one is Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s novel, One Day in the Life of
Ivan Denisovich (New York, 1963). The same author has also written
about The Gulag Archipelago (London, 1976-8). The depths of Stalin’s
anti-Semitism are explored in Arkady Vaksberg’s Stalin against the
Jews (New York, 1994).

Books in English dealing exclusively with Fascist terror are few.
The main ones are Meir Michaelis, Mussolini and the Jews: German-
Italian Relations and the Jewish Question in Italy, 1922-1945 (London,
1978) and Susan Zuccotti, The Italians and the Holocaust: Persecution,
Rescue, Survival (New York, 1987). Resistance to the Fascist regime is
discussed by Charles F. Delzell, Mussolini’s Enemies: The Italian Anti-
Fascist Resistance (Princeton, NJ, 1961); Aaron Gilett e, Racial Theories
in Fascist Italy (New York, 2002); and most recently, Michele Sarfatti,
The Jews of Mussolini’s Italy: From Equality to Persecution (Madison,
WI, 2006). Sarfatti believes that Mussolini was anti-Semitic from the
early 1920s.

Books related to Nazi terror are once again practically limitless.
The more subtle aspects of terror are described by Detlev K. Peukert,
Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday
Life (New Haven, CT, 1987). John M. Steiner, Power Politics and Social
Change in National Socialist Germany: A Process of Escalation into
Mass Destruction (Atlantic Highland, NJ, 1976) is a brilliant analysis
by a survivor of Auschwitz of the impact of Nazi attempts to con¬
trol individual patterns of thought and behavior. On the many instru¬
ments of terror see George C. Browder, Foundations of the Nazi Police
State: The Formation of Sipo and SD (Lexington, KY, 1990); Helmut
Krausnick, Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat, and Hans-Adolf
Jacobsen, Anatomy of the SS State (London, 1968), which covers the

328

Bibliographical Essay

varied activities of the SS; and Jacques DeLarue, The Gestapo: A
History of Horror (New York, 1964). Another work on the Gestapo is
Eric A. Johnson, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews, and Ordinary
Germans (New York, 1999). Robert Gellately shows that the German
people did not always disapprove of concentration camps and were
frequently informers in Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi
Germany (Oxford, 2001). Peter Fritzsche does an excellent job in
showing how the Nazis succeeded in fomenting anxieties about Jews
and other aliens in Germany in his Life and Death in the Third Reich
(Cambridge, MA, 2008).

Nazi racism and anti-Semitism are huge subtopics within the field
of Nazi terror. The background of Nazi racism is covered by George L.
Mosse in Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism
(New York, 1978). Two general surveys of the Nazi persecution of
German Jews that emphasize the peacetime years are Saul Friedlander,
Nazi Germany and the Jews, vol. I, The Years of Persecution, 1933-
1939 (New York, 1997); and Hermann Graml, Anti-Semitism in the
Third Reich (Cambridge, UK, 1992). Michael Berkowitz, in The Crime
of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality
(Berkeley, CA, 2007) maintains that Nazi anti-Semitism was based on
the theory that Jews were a criminal race. Karl A. Schleunes, in his
classic work The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy toward
German Jews, 1933-1939 (Champaign, IL, 1990), shows that the Nazis
did not have a blueprint for the “Jewish Question” when they came to
power. Ingo Muller, Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich
(Cambridge, MA, 1991) proves that German courts merely helped
enforce Nazi barbarities. On the November pogrom of 1938 there
are the popular accounts of Anthony Read and David Fischer,
Kristallnacht: The Unleashing of the Holocaust (New York, 1989) and
Gerald Schwab, The Day the Holocaust Began: The Odyssey ofHerschel
Grynszpan (New York, 1990). The newest study of Kristallnacht is
Alan E. Steinweis, Kristallnacht 1938 (Cambridge, MA, 2009) in
which the author argues that the pogrom was improvised rather than
carefully planned.

There are several good books dealing with the opposition to the
Nazis. Leonard B. Schapiro, Political Opposition in One-Party States

Bibliographical Essay

329

(London, 1972) is a broad comparative survey. Contending with
Hitler: Varieties of German Resistance in the Third Reich (Washington,
DC, 1991) is an excellent anthology edited by David Clay Large.
Another valuable scholarly study is Ian Kershaw, Popular Opinion and
Political Dissent in the Third Reich: Bavaria 1933-1945 (Oxford,
1983). Eric Kurlander investigates the ways in which German liberals
resisted but also sometimes accommodated the Third Reich in Living
with Hitler: Liberal Democrats in the Third Reich (New Haven, CT,
2009).

The origins of World War II have never attracted the tremendous
volume of literature that has been devoted to the causes of World War
I. Nevertheless, A. J. R Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War
(Old Tappan, NJ, 1997; first published in 1961) provoked a consider¬
able debate by arguing that there was much in Hitler’s diplomacy that
was traditional and unplanned. The controversy surrounding this
path-breaking book was reviewed in the anthology edited by Gordon
Martel, The Origins of the Second World War Reconsidered: The A. J. P.
Taylor Debate after Twenty-five Years (Boston, 1986). Gerhard
Weinbergs two-volume study of Hitler’s diplomacy comes closest to
being definitive: volume I, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany:
Diplomatic Revolution in Europe 1933-1936 (Chicago, 1970), covers
Hitler’s early diplomacy; volume II, Starting World War II (Chicago,
1980), is devoted to the immediate origins of the war. An updated
study by Richard and Andrew Wheatcroft is The Road to War (2nd
edn, London, 1999), which points out that for most of the interwar
period Britain and France were more concerned about defending
their worldwide empires than they were about stopping Hitler. There
are also several excellent shorter works on the diplomatic prelude to
the war. The best synthesis is probably Keith Eubank, The Origins of
World War II (3rd edn, Wheeling, IL, 2004). See also P. M. B. Bell,
The Origins of the Second World War in Europe (2nd edn, London,
1997). An interesting interpretive essay which argues that Hitler had
a Stufenplan, or foreign policy based on planned stages, is Klaus
Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich (Berkeley, CA,
1973). On Soviet attitudes toward the Munich crisis see Hugh
Ragsdale, The Soviets, the Munich Crisis, and the Coming of World

330

Bibliographical Essay

War II (New York, 2004). The immediate prelude to the war is studied
in Williamson Murrays excellent work The Change in the European
Balance of Power, 1938-1939: The Path to Ruin (Princeton, NJ, 1984).

World War II is another area that has produced a staggering
number of publications, albeit by no means all of great scholarly
value. A timeless classic about warfare in general is Anatol Rapoport,
ed„ Clausewitz on War (Harmondsworth, UK, 1968). On World War
II itself we now have the massive and comprehensive work of Gerhard
L. Weinberg, A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II
(Cambridge, UK, 1994). The same author has put together his
wide-ranging studies of the war in Germany, Hitler, and World War II:
Essays in Modern German in World History (Cambridge, UK, 1995).
A very readable account, but one lacking in new revelations, is
Andrew Roberts, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second
World War. See also Williamson Murray and Allan R. Milled, A War
To Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, MA, 2000).
A large, outstanding, although by now somewhat dated book is Henri
Michel, The Second World War, translated by Douglas Parmele
(London, 1975). Another older, but slightly less detailed, work is Peter
Calvocoressi and Guy Wint, Total War: Causes and Courses of the
Second World War (New York, 1983). B. H. Liddell Hart’s two-volume
History of the Second World War (New York, 1971) is also still of value,
although it tends to emphasize the British role in the war. His earlier
work, The German Generals Talk (New York, 1948), based on his
postwar interviews, must be used with caution. Somewhat sympathetic
descriptions of Germany’s leading generals can be found in Correlli
Barnett, ed„ Hitler’s Generals: Authoritative Portraits of the Men who
Waged Hitler’s War (New York, 1989). There are likewise many shorter
introductions to the war. Among these are John Keegan, The Second
World War (New York, 1989); M. K. Dziewanowski, War at Any Price
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1997); and James L. Stokesbury, A Short
History of World War II (New York, 1991). Hitler’s talents as a military
leader have been explored in Percy Ernst Schramm, Hitler: The Man
and the Military Leader (New York, 1978); and John Strawson, Hitler
as Military Commander (London, 1971). Hitler’s overall strategy is
explained by Norman Rich in Hitler’s War Aims: Ideology, the Nazi

Bibliographical Essay

331

State, and the Course of Expansion (New York, 1973). The early stages
of the war are studied in John Lukacs’s superb book The Last European
War, September 1939-December 1941 (Garden City, NY, 1976).
Hitler’s blunders are clearly delineated by Ronald Lewin in Hitler’s
Mistakes: New Insights into What Made Hitler Tick (New York, 1984),
and by Bevin Alexander in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II:
The Fatal Errors that Led to Nazi Defeat (New York, 2000). Looking at
the war from the opposite perspective is Richard Overy, Why the
Allies Won (New York, 1995). Very insightful is Heinz Magenheimer,
Hitler’s War: Germany’s Key Strategic Decisions, 1940-1995 (London,
1998). How the German people reacted to the course of events during
the war is found in Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler’s War and the Germans:
Public Mood and Attitude during the Second World War (Athens, OH,
1977).

Somewhat more specialized works about World War II include
the monumental study of Nazi occupation policies by Mark Mazower,
Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe (New York, 2008), which
shows the extreme variation in Nazi policies ranging from restraint to
utmost brutality. Examining the war from primarily an economic and
demographic point of view is Richard J. Evans’s excellent work The
Third Reich at War (New York, 2009). A magisterial award-winning
and highly readable new book which argues that Germany lacked the
natural resources to win the war is Adam Tooze, The Wages of
Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London,
2006). Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars: From World War to Cold War,
1939-1953 (New Haven, CT, 2006) is an excellent survey based on
original documents; and Constantine Pleshakov has written a detailed
expose of the critical first days of the Russian campaign in Stalin’s
Folly: The Tragic First Ten Days of World War II on the Eastern Front
(Boston, 2006). In What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa (New
Haven, CT, 2005) David E. Murphy argues that Stalin thought that
Germany would need at least 10 years to recover from even a success¬
ful war against the West before it could invade Russia. Another brief
but highly readable work on the same subject is John Lukacs, fune
1941: Hitler and Stalin (New Haven, CT, 2006). On other specialized
subjects see also the economic studies of Alan S. Milward, War,

332

Bibliographical Essay

Economy and Society, 1939-1945 (Berkeley, CA, 1977) and William
Carr, Arms, Autarky and Aggression: A Study in German Foreign
Policy, 1933-1939 (New York, 1972). Comparisons between German
and British strategies can be found in Alan F. Wilt, War from the Top:
German and British Military Decision Making during World War II
(Bloomington, IN, 1990). Denis Mack Smith ridicules the Duces
naive prewar and wartime foreign policy ambitions in Mussolini’s
Roman Empire (New York, 1977). By far the best work on Italy’s early
participation in the war is MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed,
1939-1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War (New York,
1982). The last phase of the war is covered by a British army officer
who fought in Italy, Richard Lamb, in War in Italy, 1943-1945:
A Brutal Story (New York, 1993). The ultimate consequences of
Mussolini’s intervention are seen in Frederick W. Deakin, The Brutal
Friendship: Mussolini, Hitler and the Fall of Fascism (New York, 1962).
The fate of Fascist leaders is discussed in Roy Palmer Domenico,
Italian Fascists on Trial, 1943-1948 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1991).

Works focusing on the Eastern Front are also plentiful. Stalin’s catas¬
trophic misjudgment of Hitler’s intention to invade is explored in
Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Illusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of
Russia (New Haven, CT, 1999). On the fighting itself see David M.
Glantz and Jonathan House, When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army
Stopped Hitler (Lawrence, KS, 1995). A good brief introduction is
James Lucas, War on the Eastern Front, 1941-1945: The German
Soldier in Russia (New York, 1982). A standard work is Alexander
Werth, Russia at War, 1941-1945 (London, 2001). Far more detailed
accounts of the campaign are the three volumes by John Erickson,
The Soviet High Command (New York, 1962), The Road to Stalingrad
(London, 1975), and The Road to Berlin (Boulder, CO, 1983). The
self-defeating nature of the war waged by the Nazis is seen in
Alexander Dallin’s scholarly German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A
Study of Occupation Policies (New York, 1957). Close-up views of
Hitler during the Russian campaign can be found in H. R. Trevor-
Roper, Blitzkrieg to Defeat: Hitler’s War Directives, 1939-1945 (New
York, 1964). Albert Speer’s Inside the Third Reich (Old Tappen, NJ,
1997) is a riveting narrative of Hitler and the late war years by a man

Bibliographical Essay

333

who became his armaments minister in 1942. On Stalin’s military
leadership, see Severyn Bialer, ed., Stalin and His Generals (New York,
1969). On Nazi wartime propaganda consult Jay W. Baird, The
Mythical World of Nazi War Propaganda, 1939-1945 (Minneapolis,
1974). On resistance movements during the war, the best works are
Jorgen Haestrup, European Resistance Movements, 1939-1945
(London, 1985) and M. R. D. Foot, Resistance: European Resistance to
Nazism 1940-1945 (London, 1976). A gruesome account of the
slaughter of Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians by both Germans and
Russians is found in Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by
Timothy Snyder (New York, 2000). The terrifying final months of the
war are described by Ian Kershaw in The End: The Defiance and
Destruction of Hitlers Germany, 1944-1945 (New York, 2012).

Only three major works were published on the Holocaust prior to
the mid-1970s. These are Gerald Reitlinger, The Final Solution: The
Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945 (Dunmove, PA,
1981; first published in 1953); Leon Poliakov, Harvest of Hate: The
Nazi Program for the Destruction of the Jews in Europe (Syracuse, NY,
1954); and Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (rev.
edn, New York, 1985). Since the 1970s, however, there has been a ver¬
itable deluge of publications, only the most important of which can be
mentioned here. A good basic survey is Yehuda Bauer, with Nili
Keren, A History of the Holocaust (rev. edn, New York, 2001). More
detailed are Leni Yahl, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry
(Oxford, 1990); Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews
of Europe during the Second World War (New York, 1985); and Benno
Muller-Hill, Murderous Science: Elimination by Scientific Selection of
Jews, Gypsies, and Others, Germany, 1933-1945 (New York, 1988). A
relatively new book on the Holocaust is Daniel Jonah Goldhagen,
Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust
(New York, 1996), which makes the very controversial allegation that
most Germans had been waiting since the mid nineteenth century for
the right moment to exterminate the Jews. A broad, popular account
of the Holocaust including the increase in anti-Semitism during the
interwar years is Deborah Dwork and Robert Ian van Pelt, Holocaust:
A History (New York, 2002). Christopher Browning, perhaps the

334

Bibliographical Essay

“dean” of American Holocaust scholars, has written numerous works
on the subject, among which are Ordinary Men: Reserve Police
Battalion 101 and the Final Solution (New York, 1992); The Origins of
the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September
1939-March 1942 (Lincoln, NE, 2004); and most recently
Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp (New York,
2010). On the central figure in the Holocaust, see Richard Breitman,
The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York,
1991). A wide-ranging anthology on anti-Semitism and various
aspects of the Holocaust is Francois Furet, ed., Unanswered Questions:
Nazi Germany and the Genocide of the Jews (New York, 1989). On the
German response to the persecution of the German Jews both before
and during the war, see Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the “Jewish
Question” (Princeton, NJ, 1984).

The literature on the Soviet Union after 1945 has also been late in
coming, but from the emergence of Gorbachev in 1985, and espe¬
cially since the disintegration of the country in 1991, it has quickly
multiplied. A brief survey is Alec Nove, Stalinism and After: The Road
to Gorbachev (Boston, 1989). A popular study by an American foreign
service officer which concentrates on the decline of Communism in
eastern Europe after 1945 is Jay Taylor, The Rise and Fall of
Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1993). On the
development of the Soviet government during and after Stalins rule,
see Jerry Hough and Merle Fainsod, How the Soviet Union is Governed
(Cambridge, MA, 1979). A general view of Soviet society is D. K.
Shipler, Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams (New York, 1983). Secret
government operations are revealed by a former agent, Pavel Anatolii
Sudoplatov, in Special Tasks (Boston, 1994). On the Khrushchev years,
see the general secretary’s own memoirs, Khrushchev Remembers: The
Last Testament (Boston, 1974), as well as Roy and Zhores Medvedev,
Khrushchev: The Years in Power (New York, 1975), and Martin
McCauley, Khrushchev and the Development of Soviet Agriculture
(London, 1976). A superbly written and scholarly biography is
William Taubman, Khrushchev: The Man and His Era (New York,
2003). The status of the Soviet economy at the end of the Khrushchev
era is described in The Soviet Economy since Stalin: Goals,

Bibliographical Essay

335

Accomplishments, Failures (Philadelphia, 1965). On the Brezhnev
years, see John Dornberg, Brezhnev: The Masks of Power (London,
1974). The corruption endemic to Soviet society has been explored by
Milovan Djilas in The New Class: An Analysis of the Communist
System (New York, 1957), in which he argues that a new privileged
group of party officials was reaping the benefits of Communism; and
by Konstantin M. Simis in USSR: The Corrupt Society (New York,
1982). An insider’s look at the Cold War is provided by Anatoly
Dobrynin, Soviet ambassador to the United States from 1962 to 1986,
in his memoirs, In Confidence (New York, 1995).

The six-year rule of Mikhail Gorbachev and the collapse of
Communism in the Soviet Union and east central Europe, not sur¬
prisingly, produced a cascade of books. Gorbachev himself outlined
his program of reform in his book Perestroika: New Thinking for Our
Country and the World (New York, 1987). A good explanation of
Gorbachev’s rise to power is Robert Kaiser, Why Gorbachev Happened
(New York, 1992). MosheLewin argues in The Gorbachev Phenomenon:
A Historical Interpretation (expanded edn, Berkeley, CA, 1991) that
Gorbachev was the product of long-term changes in the professional
and intellectual classes which recognized the need for political reform.
In A Normal Totalitarian Society: How the Soviet Union Functioned
and How it Collapsed (Armonk, NY, 2001), Vladimir Shlapentokh, a
former citizen of the Soviet Union, argues that the USSR was still a
viable, if backward, state until Gorbachev unintentionally brought
about its dissolution. Robert V. Daniels maintains in The End of the
Communist Revolution (London, 1993) that the Soviet Union disinte¬
grated because of the incompatibility of democracy and the nation¬
ality problem. The same issue is discussed by Ronald Grigor Suny in
The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism and the Collapse of the Soviet
Union (Stanford, CA, 1993). Raymond Pearson contends in The Rise
and Fall of the Soviet Empire (New York, 1998) that the Soviet Union
was overextended and its leaders misjudged the power of nationalism
among the non-Russian minorities. Robert Strayer argues in Why Did
the Soviet Union Collapse? Understanding Historical Change (London,
1998) that Soviet citizens appreciated the welfare state and the USSR’s
status as a global power, but the command economy lacked flexibility,

336

Bibliographical Essay

creativity, and incentive. Vladislav M. Zubok points out in A Failed
Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev
(Chapel Hill, NC, 2007) that Gorbachev, like Stalin, monopolized
political decisions, but unlike the latter had no xenophobic or cultural
hostility toward the West. A journalists eyewitness account of the
Gorbachev years and immediately thereafter is found in David
Remnick’s Lenin’s Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (New
York, 1994). Geoffrey Stern’s The Rise and Decline of International
Communism (Aldershot, UK, 1990) includes a third and final section
on the decline of Communism in the Soviet Union and its satellite
states. On the overthrow of Communism in the Soviet dependencies,
see the anthology edited by Ivo Banac, Eastern Europe in Revolution
(Ithaca, NY, 1992). The daily events which led to the downfall of the
Communist system are recounted from articles which appeared in the
New York Times in Bernard Gwertzman and Michael T. Kaufman,
eds„ The Collapse of Communism (New York, 1991).

For those who wish to examine the German Democratic Republic
(East Germany) as an example of totalitarianism, there are several
excellent and recently published books from which to choose. Henry
Ashby Turner, Jr. surveys the entire history of both East and West
Germany in Germany from Partition to Reunification (New Haven,
CT, 1992). Two books which analyzed the German Democratic
Republic shortly before its demise are C. Bradley Scharf, Politics and
Change in East Germany: An Evaluation of Socialist Democracy
(Boulder, CO, 1984) and Mike Dennis, German Democratic Republic:
Politics, Economics and Society (London, 1988). A revealing first-hand
look at the GDR by an American is Paul Gleye, Behind the Wall: An
American in East Germany, 1988-89 (Carbondale, IL, 1991). A beau¬
tifully written work based on the very different memories of its citi¬
zens is Mary Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from
Hitler to Honecker (New Haven, CT, 2005). The collapse itself is
covered in Melvin J. Lasky, Voices in a Revolution: The Collapse of East
German Communism (New Brunswick, NJ, 1992).

The fate of the Nazi war criminals is revealed by Bradley Smith in
Reaching Judgment at Nuremberg (New York, 1977) and Robert E.
Conot, Justice at Nuremberg (New York, 1983). The insights of a

Bibliographical Essay

337

prison psychologist who interviewed the top Nazis at Nuremberg are
found in G. H. Gilbert, The Psychology of Dictatorship (Westport, CT,
1950). The impact of the Nazi regime for the future of German
democracy is discussed in Ralf Dahrendorf, Society and Democracy
(Garden City, NY, 1967).

Index

abortions

in Germany, 149,158
in Italy, 142,143,144,155
in Soviet Union, 135,137,138,
139,283,284
agriculture

under Bolshevik rule, 19,78
collectivization of in Russia, 6,22,
79-86,101,105,106,129,164,
165,166,167,170,171
in Fascist Italy, 92,93
Hitler’s goals for, 10,190
in Nazi Germany, 97
in Soviet Union, 270,273,274,
279,280-1,291,294,298
Albania, 8,220,221,301
Alexander III (tsar of Russia), 15

Allies

bombing in Italy, 250
bombing of Germany, 224,256-8
D-Day and, 258-9
events precipitating alliance, 228,
238, 300

Italy’s declaration of war on,

256,296

North African campaign, 234,
256,258
strategy of, 256
surrender of Italy, 252
see also France; Great Britain;
Soviet Union/Russia; United
States; World War II
Alliluyeva, Nadezhda, 55
Andropov, Yuri, 277

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini: Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century,
Fourth Edition. Bruce F. Pauley.

Index

339

Anglo-German Naval Agreement,
195,215

Anglo-Soviet alliance, 228,238
Angola, 288

anticapitalism, 27,90,95
anticlericalism, 26,27,29,60,61,
62,156,293
antifeminism, 140-50
anti-intellectualism, 126,197,224
antimilitarism, 29,61
antimiscegenation laws, 179,184
antimonarchism, 27,29
anti-Semitism

in Austria, 67,68,178,179,180,
181,182,185

Catholic Church and, 178,180
discrediting of, 301, 304
fascism and, 126,295
in Germany, 8-9,118-19,120,
127,130,146,151,158,174-83
of Hitler, 8-9,42,45,67,176,
182-3,293,295
in Italy, 8,126,183-5,295
Lenin and, 15
in Poland, 208
results of, 301
of Stalin, 270-1

United States and, 175,178, 301
“April Theses” (Lenin), 15
Arbeitsbuch , 97
armistice (1918), 36-7,41
arms race, 269,288
arts/architecture see culture
Aryan race, 8,9,66,131,149,151,
158,159,179,180,183,223,295
atheism, 7,18,20, 59,135,155
athletics

in Germany, 112,130,131,133,
145,299

in Italy, 121,129-30,133,141,299
in Soviet Union, 122
Atlantic, Battle of the, 254
Atlantic Charter, 244-5
Atlantic Wall, 258
atomic bomb, 255
Austria

anti-Semitism in, 67,68,178,179,
180,181,182,185
French/Prussian victory over, 23
German takeover of, 177,180,
200,201-3,221,299
Hitler in, 40,65,67-8
Mussolini in, 60
Paris Peace Settlement and,

25,192
politics in, 68
propaganda used in, 110
Austria-Hungary, 24-5,68,

180,218

Austrian Parliament, 67
autarky, 91-2,100-1,114,187,240
authors see writers
autobahns , 98-9,207
Axis alliance, 188,198,199,200,
216-17,225

see also Germany; Italy; Japan;
World War II

Badoglio, Pietro, 251,252
Baltic states

under Central Powers, 36
Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression
Pact and, 228,290
Russia’s loss of in World War 1,18
secession of, 290
after World War 1,18
World War II and, 208,215,223,
228,239,240,248

340

Index

Barmen Confessions, 159
Battle of Britain, 215,224,239
see also Great Britain
Beauty of Labor Office, 96-7
Beer Hall Putsch, 41,43,293
Belgium

imperialism of, 33
remilitarization of Rhineland
and, 198

World War I and, 34, 36
World War II and, 214,223,234,
240,244,259
Belgrade, 224
Berchtesgaden, 70, 72
Beria, Lavrenti, 272
Berlin, 41,115,119,120-1,130,

131,177,216,224,257,260,
269,296

Berlin, Treaty of, 193
Berlusconi, Silvio, 300-1
birth control

declining populations and, 144,160
in Germany, 148,158
in Italy, 143,144,155
in Soviet Union, 135,138,

283, 284

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Texts

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Hitler Stalin Mussolini"

See other formats